


In This Essay I Will

by cinnamonsnaps



Series: Various Witcher fics [1]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Comedy, Fix-It, GERALT IS OFFICIALLY NO LONGER OFF SCREEN, Humor, M/M, Post-Break Up, jaskier is THAT college professor, jaskier is going thru a messy break up and all his students are there to witness it first hand, post episode s01e06
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23082631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinnamonsnaps/pseuds/cinnamonsnaps
Summary: Post mountain incident, Jaskier limps back to Oxenfurt with his tail between his legs, deciding to throw himself into his academic career in the hopes of distracting himself. Unlucky for him, all his students want to talk about is a certain White Wolf.---“Well, it’s just...” Rimmond said, still giggling, “we wanted to ask you something, actually? Um, professor... how did you meet the White Wolf? Only nobody interesting ever passes through this town, and if we’re supposed to go and meet our heroes...”Ah, Jaskier thought.“Never meet your heroes, Rimmond,” he said, trying to sound wry and humorous. He wasn’t sure he was pulling it off. “They’re usually not very nice people.”
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion/Valdo Marx, the endgame is geralt/jaskier
Series: Various Witcher fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1675948
Comments: 137
Kudos: 453





	1. Rhymes With Cock

**Author's Note:**

> okay i KNOW this is the second unfinished fic i'm writing but i really wanted to see jaskier in an academic setting doing lectures, and seeing geralt come along and fuck it all up  
> anyway did you know that one of the meanings of buttercups in a bouquet is "ingratitude"?

The classroom was very warm with a cosy fire crackling in the corner. Several students had undone their cloaks just enough to be modest but more comfortable, even while the cold winter rain pelted the glass outside. There was a very tense silence, full of expectant gazes, every ear carefully trained on the raised dias where a very lauded speaker was about to make a very important point. 

“Not many things,” the great bard Dandelion said in a grand voice, “rhyme with cock.”

There was a general scratching from the students as multiple quills noted this down. 

“Frock, sock, mock,” he said, wandering across the stage and counting them off on his fingers, “all fine words and well suited for a bawdy tale about a maiden and her inadvisable preoccupation with male poultry, but what are we to do in the case of serious epics-”

A student raised her hand and said before he could stop her, “clock!”

“Clock,” he agreed, with a slight incline of his head. “As I was saying. Suppose you wish to use a word with terrible rhymes into an epic. Now. An amateur would turn to a thesaurus - and there’s a rather extensive one in the library if you care to spend an evening reading one hundred different synonyms for door - and I suppose that works fine.”

The bard Dandelion, as he was addressed by his admirers, and Jaskier as he was called by everyone else, drew himself up to his full height and geared up for a rather imperious statement. 

“Tis better to paint with fewer brush strokes the evocative outline of an idea, than to spill the ink and blot the detail with too much colour.”

A student raised her hand again. 

“Which colour?”

“What?” Jaskier blinked and stared at her, a little thrown off his train of thought. 

“Which colour ink? Because we’re only allowed to use black for this course.”

“The ink is metaphorical,” Jaskier said, tilting his head with a frown. “I thought that was clear.”

“Pock,” another student said loudly from the back. “Like a pockmark. Is that something?”

“What?”

“Lock!” another student eagerly volunteered. “Lock rhymes!”

“If we were supposed to buy painting inks, they really should have told us before the class started,” the first student was saying, eyebrows furrowing with concern. “They’re quite expensive.”

Students were beginning to talk amongst themselves, half coming up with more rhymes for cock, while the other half were rather angrily talking about the cost of inks. Jaskier, who was very tired and more than a little hungover, walked back to the desk at the back of the dias and opened the bottom drawer to reveal a very expensive bottle of sherry. Pouring himself a thimbleful, he tipped it back and sighed. 

Post graduates. He hated postgrads the most. Now, undergraduates, first years especially, the fresh meat, they were easy to handle. You could scare them into silence with a raised eyebrow and a quiet cough, even if they never did the bloody work and always skipped class to go drinking. But postgrads had been through the system and survived, and nothing scared them anymore - certainly not Jaskier, Honorary Professor Pankratz (though nobody called him that), the infamously raucous bard who they had seen walking across campus nursing his head and cursing all timetables for arranging anything before midday. 

Things weren’t usually this dire. He quite enjoyed teaching. After all, how many times could you trap five to thirty young people in a lecture hall and get paid to speak at them all about yourself? But that was back when he was on top form. And he certainly wasn’t on top form now. 

So. After the mountain- which he prefers not to think about on the best of days - he crawled back to Oxenfurt to collect his bursary and slum around the pubs, in a hopeless effort to take his mind off things. He had stumbled into the Dean’s office, eyes red, unshaved and in a truly garish outfit, right in the thick of a mid-life crisis, and the Dean had for some god forsaken reason assigned him guest lectures with a bunch of postgrads with a charitable smile. 

“Come now, Julian,” he had said with a shake of his head. “You’re a bright man with a wealth of experience. These students need the voice of a bard who’s seen the world.”

“Because they’re all sheltered nobles’ children who haven’t got two wits to rub together?” Jaskier replied, despite the fact that he once had been a sheltered nobles’ child with no wits to speak of. 

“Because we all were young once,” the Dean said, with a very knowing look in his eye. Jaskier agreed, of course. It felt crass not to, at that point.

And yes, maybe it was nice to have some kind of routine again after years - years! years and years of his life! - of wandering and following, dropping all plans to come along on some hare-brained scheme, with - with him. The one he wasn’t thinking of. 

And yes, maybe now he was feeling slightly better now that he’d done his whole post-break-up routine of getting miserably drunk in every tavern in Oxenfurt, singing the saddest songs he’d ever written, and having some truly inadvisable sex with Valdo fucking Marx of all people in a back alley like teenagers - if by “better” you meant “abominably worse”. 

He was tired, Jaskier realised quite suddenly, looking at his empty glass of sherry. He was so very tired and sad. 

“Professor?” a timid voice said, and he turned with a smile - his “I am a teacher now” smile. His “I will shape the young minds for the future” smile. 

“Yes, Gainsely?”

Gainsely, who honestly could have been a boy or a girl under all those scarves and seemed perpetually ill, looked between the slowly quieting class and Jaskier, clearly gathering confidence, before plunging on. 

“I had a look at the course schedule and... it says that we’re not going to be studying any of your songs. I think that must be a mistake. The induction meeting said we’d be learning from your experiences. I mean... your songs.”

Jaskier looked to the ceiling for strength. His songs. He had deliberately tried to avoid putting them on the schedule, because they were all about bloody Geralt of bloody Rivia and his stupid bloody adventures and exploits.

“It’s rather conceited of me to assume you all took this class just to hear me talk about my own songs, isn’t it? Surely you’d rather we focus on general music theory-”

“But we did,” the female student - ah, Torrera, that was her last name, Jaskier remembered now - said eagerly. “That’s exactly why we took this class.”

Jaskier’s shoulders slumped. He looked from face to face, seeking some kind of disagreement, but everyone just nodded as if this made sense. He sighed. 

“I see. Right. You want to learn how I wrote the songs, don’t you.” The nodding reached frenzy levels. “Yes, of course, yes. Right. Well. I’m sure I can... put together some classes for you.”

This seemed to please the class, who immediately switched back to the topic of rhyming expletives. Jaskier let them. He had a whole term’s worth of lectures to plan, and he needed another drink. 


	2. Descending Hook

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet Valdo, and Jaskier pretends he enjoys getting negged

Back in his room, Jaskier examined his beard in the mirror. He’d let his hair grow long. It made him look older - such a different look to that fresh faced boy who wandered over to a witcher those years ago. He rather liked this new look. It was... he hoped it made him look distinguished, though he had nobody to ask. Never mind. He had nobody to impress, anyway. 

His songs were spread on the bed behind him in an untidy sprawl. This was the first time he’d actually looked at them since - since the mountain. He hadn’t had the courage since. But now, he needed to choose the ones he wanted to teach, and that was a task he was putting off for as long as possible. Perhaps he could start innocently, singing of things like money and geography and completely lacking a single silver haired milkmaids. There had to be at least  _ one _ song that he’d written that had absolutely nothing to do with Geralt. 

“And down the tumbling hill the saucy maid did fall, with skirts about her ankles and her lover deep in thrall-” he mumbled, reading the closest one, before making a face and tossing it aside. No raunchy songs about milkmaids. The Dean would find out somehow, and he’d end up in the dog house. 

He looked for some of his epic work instead. He found one which wasn’t about Geralt.

“O Muse, sing to me of the woman with violet eyes, who through her bloody ambition no lack of strength - oh, this is-”

About Yennefer. He tossed it aside too, pinching the bridge of his nose. It would have to be something Geralt related. Everything else was... well, frankly, it was awful. Dully, his eyes turned to the song he’d written so long ago, still flush with excitement and adoration. The rhymes were clunky, but he knew it was one of his most popular. Great. Right. He would talk about this one. 

* * *

“Pair up. Yes, all of you. Pairs will do, threes if necessary. Now, take one stanza each and break it down for me. I want you to mark the metre, the rhyme, the structure, and afterwards we’ll talk about what works and what doesn’t. Go.”

Good. He could do this quite easily. Sitting on his uncomfortable teaching chair, Jaskier relaxed as he watched his students pair up and start muttering, looking up at the rough scrawl he had copied onto the blackboard. The lyrics came to him so easily it was like breathing, though it had caught him unawares when he forgot what followed “bring you the-” and had to think for what he had decided on. Like missing a step, the sudden gap had frozen him solid, until someone called “morn!” and he wrote it with a laugh. Morn. Of course. He shook off the little shudder that ran through him at the idea of losing his memory. Morn indeed. 

Underneath was the melody transcribed onto a hastily drawn stave, just neat enough for the students to read. For now, though, there was blessed quiet. Nobody was singing the damn song. They were all working hard, heads bent together, taking apart his hard work and dissecting it for clues. 

The discussion part went admirably. They raised many good points about his chord progression, getting into technical jargon that Jaskier hadn't properly engaged with in years but was pleased to still remember. 

"The way the chorus descends-" Torrera said, and Jaskier was beginning to like her, she was quite bright, "and then leads you into an unfulfilling final chord acts like a hook to keep it in your mind." 

"Perfect," Jaskier said with a broad grin. "And for what purpose?" 

"To make people get the song stuck in their head," another student said - Horace, that was right, Horace was the blonde boy with chubby cheeks and an overbite. Jaskier normally couldn't stand a man with no chin, but there was something endearing about Horace. 

"And, in consequence?" he prompted. 

"Remember to give a coin to their witcher." 

"That's right. Music has purpose. Make a song catchy and you can use it to spread a message far and wide, and quickly too. This is music's function as a social norm setter. Does that make sense?"

There were nods. Torrera raised her hand, and Jaskier nodded at her with an encouraging smile. 

"Why did you want people to give money to the witcher? Don't people pay him already?"

Jaskier grimaced, wondering how simply he could say the complicated mess that was payment on the road. 

"Well," he said, "some people don't take very kindly to witchers even after they do a bang up job of killing the local monster. I saw the witcher get short-changed more often than not. It was frustrating, like not getting paid for a commission after you've already written it." 

Torrera looked perplexed. "Why wouldn't you pay a witcher? Especially if he could just turn around and kill you-"

"He wouldn't," Jaskier said, sharply, before realising he had done it. Torrera looked alarmed and abashed. He forced his teeth to unclench and relax into a more casual look. "You can't solve all your problems by killing people, can you? Now, we're wildly off topic. Group two, what were you saying about the rhyming scheme...?"

* * *

"So," a slimy voice said from behind Jaskier's ear as he collected spare parchment from the desks after class, "does Professor Pankratz do private classes?"

"Honorary Professor," Jaskier said automatically. He turned and came eye to eye with Valdo Marx, who was looking incredibly smug. "How did you get in?"

"I was a star pupil too, little Dandelion," Valdo replied. He picked up a parchment and read it, mouthing the words to himself. "How twee. Does the Dean know you're teaching them your funny old ditty?"

"Well, I can't teach them one of yours, can I?" Jaskier bit back, not feeling up to Marx's needling attempts to wind him up today. The man was only tolerable when he was drunk and not talking. "They're trying to learn epic song, not how to send an audience to sleep."

Valdo rounded on him in an instance, moustache comedically twirling with rage at the ends. It was truly a stupid moustache. Jaskier didn't know why he kept tangling with this man - he'd been handsome when they were younger, but they were both old enough to be fathers or even grandfathers now, and time had not been kind to Valdo. He resembled a tired lace cushion most of the time, and a yapping pug the rest. 

"Elegiac poetry is the closest thing we have to divine inspiration," Valdo spat, "rather than your endless thinly veiled sonnets about a certain witcher's oversized bollocks."

"They're quite normal sized," Jaskier said mildly, making a face as Valdo grabbed his doublet. "Easy. I just got this cleaned." 

"And yet he's not here to back up that claim, is he?" Valdo smirked, all nasty angles and spite, and Jaskier wondered if anyone else ever received this kind of treatment from the man. "Fancy that."

Jaskier regretted it. He regretted his moment of drunken weakness where he had spilled the whole sorry story to Valdo Marx because he was the only person in the tavern who gave a damn, even if it was only to wield against Jaskier later like a dagger. He regretted the fact that he rather enjoyed Marx's attempts to anger him, because they were the most personal attention he had received in months. He regretted a great many things. 

"Why are you here, Marx?" he said, gesturing to the lecture hall. "To start a fight? To make me angry?"

As if sensing the defeat in Jaskier's voice, Valdo let him go, looking like the itch to start a fight had been quelled for now. "Actually, I was going to invite you out for a drink." 

"Oh, thank Melitele." With a quick movement, Jaskier shoved the rest of the parchments into his bag, and followed Valdo at a brisk march out of the hall. 

* * *

"There's a big hole in me," Jaskier admitted. He'd lost count of how many cups they had drank between them, but the collection of empty flagons grew steadily until it took the barmaid three trips to take them back to the kitchen to wash. He was drunk, he knew that much. "A great, empty cavern that I didn't know I'd filled until it suddenly wasn't."

Valdo was squinting at him, eyes narrowed with thought. He was three sheets to the wind. Jaskier had seen him try to drink from the same empty cup seven times. 

"Are you talking about your-"

"Gerroutofit," Jaskier said, hitting his shoulder. "'m talking about my 'eart, not my arse. My heart's been ripped out. Clean out. Like a... like a slinkie." 

Valdo blinked one eyelid at a time. "Wasn't gonna say that," he said, affronted. "Was gonna say you'd been stabbed."

"Not a slinkie," Jaskier said, massaging his temples with his knuckles. "The other one. Slender. Selkie. No, that's a wet horse." 

"Don't blame me for talking about holes and then you go and think about your arse. That's on you. I was thinking about you getting stabbed."

The name was on the tip of Jaskier's tongue, though he struggled to grasp it. "Nasty. Cursed girl. Three cock's crows. St- stryga! She eats hearts." He burped. "And livers."

"My ex was a stryga," Valdo said darkly. His mood had flipped suddenly, and there was a strange anger forming between his ears. "Ate my heart." 

"Me too." Jaskier's mood was much more melancholy. "We weren't even involved, that's the stupid thing. 've never been this upset about losing a friend. A friend! But it aches like... like..."

"Like a hole," Valdo completes for him. "You're an idiot."

"What? Because of the hole-?"

"You're an idiot," Valdo repeated, jabbing Jaskier in the chest. "What did you expect from befriending a witcher. He's got no feelings. Stands to reason." 

Jaskier stood up abruptly, pulling Valdo up with him by his stupid frilly little ruff. "I take a lot of shit from you, my igna- ignaceous- pugnaceous little fellow, but I won't stand this kind of blatant misinformation-"

He was speaking quickly and blackly, voice low and threatening, because it wasn't true, it wasn't, or rather, he suspected it was but he didn't want to believe it because that would be so cruel, so cruel if Geralt sent him away and felt nothing - nothing - but he did have feelings, and they were all for the sorceress with violet eyes-

Valdo leaned into his space, eyes full of fire, and oh. Oh. Now Jaskier remembered exactly why he tangled with this man so often. 

"What are you gonna do about it?" 

* * *

Jaskier woke up sore in Valdo Marx's bed. It appeared that he had done something rather stupid about it. 

Valdo snored away beside him. He looked awful in the morning light, bristly and wrinkly and pudgy, soft from years of settling for an academic life of three hot dinners a day, somehow bitter and nasty even when his personality was deeply asleep. It seeped through his pores. If he were a nicer person, perhaps Jaskier would have described him as dignified. But he wasn't. 

It seemed Jaskier had a taste for selfish men. 

He rolled out of bed and limped back to his own room. 


	3. Bitter Fool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [smacks jaskier] this man can fit so many emotions in him but right now it's all bad

Class that afternoon was unbearable. He was sweating under his modest clothes, toned down for the classroom but only slightly, and his head pounded. Jaskier felt like his eyes were swimming in bad humours. His whole body sloshed. 

He was never, ever drinking again. 

The class watched quietly as he wrote down the notes to a melody on the blackboard. The only noise was his unhappy breathing and the uncomfortable scratch of chalk every now and then. Sometimes it would squeak, and he would wince and wish for some blessed relief. 

"A bit of practical development here," he said, gesturing to the board. "I've given you a very simple melody. You may recognise it, though I hope not - I've deliberately chosen a more obscure one so you won't be affected by any previous versions you've heard. Now. This may sound quite simple, but I would like you all to create the accompaniment for any instrument of your choice..."

They set to work, and Jaskier had to steady himself on his desk at the sudden wave of noise. Lutes, flutes, lyres and drums, all clashing and sharp against each other. He'd timed his little moment of weakness terribly. 

There was chatter too, though Jaskier allowed it. He knew it got him called “unprofessional” and “lax” by the other professors, but he couldn’t bear to yell at people to shut up. Reminded him too much of his own schooling. Besides, these were all grown adults. They knew better than to chatter away like fishwives at the pump. 

And yet. Here were two of his students, chattering away. He didn’t mind it, choosing to eavesdrop as he walked between the desks instead of rapping them across the knuckles with his cane - as his old masters had once done. Bitter gits.

“I hope I get to follow a brave knight,” a girl was saying, what was her name? Rimmonds? “Someone big and tough who’ll protect me. And hopefully handsome too.”

“If he’s a knight, of course he’ll be handsome,” her conversation partner replied. “There’s something about a man in armour.”

“I’ll write him love sonnets all day, and at night when he comes back from protecting the people, we’ll cosy by the fire and I’ll take all that armour off piece by piece-”

“Amille!” her partner said. A wide set boy, dark and with a witty sort of face, which currently looked scandalised. His eyes flickered up to Jaskier, and when they made eye contact, he flushed deep red. “Um - sorry, professor-”

Rimmond shut her mouth and turned red too, stifling nervous giggles behind her hand. 

“Honorary professor,” Jaskier corrected, before shrugging. These students were so... so something. Naive, maybe. Knights were far from the handsome, chivalrous men they imagined. “Have you finished already? Or are you struggling to understand the task?”

“Well, it’s just...” Rimmond said, still giggling, “we wanted to ask you something, actually? Um, professor... how did you meet the White Wolf? Only nobody interesting ever passes through this town, and if we’re supposed to go and meet our heroes...”

Ah, Jaskier thought. 

“Never meet your heroes, Rimmond,” he said, trying to sound wry and humorous. He wasn’t sure he was pulling it off. “They’re usually not very nice people.”

“But... how are we meant to meet the person who inspires us? Like you did?”

“As far as career plans go, I do not recommend using me as a role model. I got this position thanks to the hard academic work I did when I was your age, not thanks to a man I happened to meet in some small one horse village.” Posada. How could he ever forget? The name was etched into his very soul. “Listen, you’re training to be a bard, are you?”

Rimmond, and some eavesdroppers who had started paying attention, all nodded yes. 

“What a terrible idea,” Jaskier said, firmly, and their faces morphed into horror and shock. “If you really, really want to spend your life making no money and selling your soul for a slice of bread, then absolutely be a musician. Here’s how to do it sensibly; register with the Bard Guild, take up contracts for nobles and commissions for kings who need propaganda, write a few drinking songs to make a name for yourself, and find some rich patron who’ll tuck you under their ludicrously rich wing and prepare to write a million sonnets about their favourite horse, or something equally as inane. Most won’t be so lucky. I certainly wasn’t.”

The faces of his students spoke of a hundred dreams shattered. Good, he thought. Better me to break them gently than the world, cruelly and with claws. 

“But your songs about the witcher-”

“Luck, simple as.” Jaskier shrugged. “Well, no. They’re good because I studied hard here in the Academy. But you aren’t seeing the hundreds of failed songs I wrote beside them. Each one I thought was the next Toss a Coin was a flop. Of course they were! I was a young inexperienced writer trying to go solo. You’re all better off taking contracts, or, for the better, keeping music as a hobby.”

Rimmond looked like she was about to cry. Jaskier’s petty resolve crumbled immediately. 

“I’m sorry. I’ve thoughtlessly stomped all over the fragile shoots of your aspirations - make no mistake, having dreams is fine. But as someone who's had the same dreams and has seen what it takes to realise them, I didn't want you all to rush blindly to your destinies." He said the last word slightly ironically, and Rimmond sniffed, still looking heartbroken. 

“It’s a little bit hypocritical, isn't it?” her partner said, jumping to her defense. “Especially when you went and did everything you just told us not to.”

Jaskier frowned, keeping his voice even and light as he spoke. “What I did was stupid.” He’d been mad, utterly mad, touched by the moon to go out and wander, driven by a life which wasn’t his, inspired to break every rule just for the hell of it. “I saw a dangerous man in a bar and I followed him. I ended up being his punching bag for twenty years. Constantly starving, never appreciated.”

Rimmond’s brows were crumpling with confusion. “But... weren’t you friends?”

“Of course we were!” Jaskier replied, raising his hands, because they had been, logically, friends. Despite what Geralt did later and said earlier. They had been friends. “But this is what I’m trying to tell you. Don’t put all your hopes and dreams into some hypothetical hero who will carry you along and inspire you. Don’t meet your heroes. They’re all messy, horrible people who got to where they are through great sacrifices, who do something outside of our little human bubble, who walk the line between fucked up and powerful. I got some of my best material from witnessing it, of course I did, but at what cost? No money, no security, permanent blisters and a ban for life from most of the taverns on the continent. Don’t daydream about great literary romances. It’s all blood and dirt and yelling at each other.”

He realised, belatedly, that the whole lecture hall was listening to him rant aimlessly. He shut his mouth and, though he kept his expression straight, internally he winced. This was not what the students wanted to hear: the bitter ire of a man who felt underappreciated by a witcher. Fuck, he should have just left alone and let them all find out the hard way - experience was the best teacher, and anyway, they were all nobles’ kids. None of them actually had to work for a living. He knew exactly what kind of position they were all in, and how little this one class actually mattered to their future lives. They'd all become bloody landowners soon. 

Before the ensuing silence could become oppressive, Jaskier clapped his hands together. 

“Right. Who volunteers to show us your accompaniment? Don’t be shy now. How about you, Torrera, what have you been working on...?”

* * *

“... a witcher.”

“What? Really? Here?”

Jaskier sat bolt upright, going from pleasantly napping to jittery with adrenaline in only three seconds. The two teachers, the Master of Experimental Philosophy and the Master of Historiography, had been talking rather loudly in their chairs across the professor's lounge, and Jaskier had managed to drown them out enough to doze by the fire in a comfortable armchair with plenty of cushions. 

That is, until they said the dreaded words: witcher. Here. Geralt? he thought, his hands clenching on the arms of the chair. 

"Ridding a house of a spectre, apparently. A great see through thing with lots of rattling chains. Saw him going down Tern Lane." 

Jaskier vaguely knew where Tern Lane was, and then cursed himself for imagining the route he would take to get there quick. He wasn't going to run at Geralt like a desperate puppy. Not anymore. Geralt could come and find him. 

"Did you see his eyes?" 

"No, I only saw his back. His two swords - one silver, one iron."

Steel, Jaskier almost said out loud, for god's sakes everyone knows it's steel. Don't you listen to my bloody songs? 

At the same time, his heart plummeted. A sick part of him wanted to jump out of his chair and find Geralt and shake him until he begged for mercy, and then punch him, and then get on his knees and plead to travel with him again. 

Another part of him, an older and wiser part that had been around the block for a good few years and knew about things like dignity and self respect, wanted him to stay firmly planted in this armchair and read a nice book to take his mind off things. He was too old to go and do silly things like run after people who had asked to be left alone. He didn't need anyone's company so desperately as he thought. 

(A third part - the foolish part of him, the one that urged him to run around and kiss strangers and follow dangerous men, and wished death on Marx at the first opportunity, and got angry in bar fights and made him leave Oxenfurt that first time and go travel all the time itching under his skin like a fever - wanted him to stay here so that Geralt could come and find him and crawl, on his knees, and beg for forgiveness. Jaskier ignored that part, on the basis that it was more likely Geralt would strip down in the market and start dancing for money than ever do something as base as  _ grovel. _ )

"First time I've seen one. They never come to cities like this." 

"Isn't that a good thing? They're too dangerous to live in places like this. I mean, would you want to live next door to a mutant killing machine who could chop you to bits in the blink of an eye?" 

The Master of Historiography agreed that no, no he wouldn't, really. Idiots. Jaskier was surrounded by idiots. 

Well, if he was feeling cooped up, then it was perfectly sensible to go for a walk outside to clear his head. Nothing to do with Geralt - just a man overcome with the interminable platitude of being cooped up indoors for so long, wanting to stretch his legs a little. Jaskier stood and stretched nonchalantly. A walk, nowhere near Tern Lane. 

"Oh, Pankratz! Off to see your witcher?" 

Curse Experimental Philosophy. Curse all people who study it. A pox upon them and their idiotic subject. 

"No, no," he said, giving the two masters a dazzling smile. "Off for a walk by the river. I'm sure he's getting along fine without my interference."

Wasn't that the sad truth. The two masters just laughed. 

"All the better! I bet he's being positively deluged by coins as we speak." 

Hope one of them hits him on the head and knocks him out, Jaskier thought uncharitably, before baring his teeth again. 

"One can hope! Well, I'm off." 

He tried not to look like he was fleeing as he left. To his credit, he almost looked casual. 

* * *

Jaskier was meandering. He was definitely meandering. His destination was unknown, and his feet carried him over cobbles and flagstones, past taverns and shops, without any real place in mind. The fresh air did nothing to calm his nerves. If anything, the shock of cold winter air made his teeth chatter and his hands shake, and he'd invested in a nice warm cloak for the colder months but it didn't quite keep out the wind. But still, he meandered. 

People nodded and greeted him when they recognised him, or looked the other way and snubbed him: he didn't really mind, considering that he'd found city folk to be terribly fickle, and they'd probably be falling over themselves to greet him for some reason or other later in the year, or vice versa. People were such complicated animals. He'd always liked playing their games, because he too was a fickle human animal who laughed and joked and got offended. 

Geralt had been so simple, and yet so much more complex. 

But he wasn't thinking of Geralt. He was thinking of nothing at all except for the cobbles and flagstones. 

Say, if he were to pass Geralt on the street, would he greet him or snub him? He pondered both possibilities. A greeting would be a dangerous move, high risk and high reward. Besides, there was a delicious satisfaction to snubbery. The power it had. Ah, sorry stranger, I don't know who you are. You're not fit to be seen by my eyes. Carry on as if you never saw me, and stew. 

No, but wait. What if they snubbed each other? That would never do. A good snubbing simply wasn't satisfactory if the other party was also turning their nose up and steadfastly ignoring you. Or worse: if Jaskier greeted Geralt, and Geralt snubbed him, why, the mortification would kill him on the spot, and the hurt would come back, and it just didn't bear to think about. 

Well, it didn't matter. Jaskier wasn't going to run into Geralt. He was wandering aimlessly. Meandering. Not going anywhere near Tern Lane.

There was a commotion ahead - a group of people standing around a house, yelling and chattering, craning their necks to get a better look inside the dark windows. Random crashes and shrieks burst from the inside. No. It couldn't be. He looked up at the street sign, and cursed under his breath. 

There he was, on Tern Lane. Jaskier closed his eyes for a moment, and then did exactly what he'd always done before, because he was a man of peculiar habits that were very hard to break. He walked directly towards the danger. 

"Say, good fellow, what's happening?" he asked a random passerby as he got closer. 

"Tis a witcher, sir, on a hunt." The man was peering with squinted eyes at the windows. "Heard there's a spirit trapped in the attic, or so's told." 

"Making a terrible mess of my dishes, 'e is!" a woman said beside him, her wimple slipping off her hair with stress. "'onestly, what's the point of 'iring 'im to get rid of this ghoul when 'e makes just as much damage or more?" 

Jaskier turned back to the house to watch, heart pounding in his chest. So. Geralt was inside there somewhere. Throwing himself around carelessly, no doubt, bashing into every delicate thing in the house in pursuit of his prey. Making a terrible mess, just as usual. 

Did he look the same? Would he emerge caked in dirt and unkempt? Had he found someone else to tenderly bathe the blood from his hair and polish his armour? Or had he just reverted to his customary solitude, bathing alone, eating alone, travelling the roads so very alone? 

There was a large crash. The bystanders, taken by that strange and novel sense of camaraderie that occurs when people come together to watch a spectacle, cheered. 

"Go on, get 'im!" an elderly man yelled, and Jaskier couldn't work out if it was in favour of the spirit or of Geralt.

The fight quietened down. Jaskier froze. There was a creak, another, and then quiet. 

"Ah, he's all done then," the first man said, patting his pockets for spare change. "Right fast and aw. Speak what you will about them, but they ain't half efficient." 

The door shuttered as someone inside made the air move, and Jaskier jerked, panicked, mind racing. Was Geralt about to emerge? 

He wasn't ready. He'd been half planning some sort of reunion in his head, something petty and stupid: Jaskier, in a tavern at night, surrounded by beauties hanging off his arm and giggling at something very witty which he just said and would have to workshop later, spotting Geralt staring folornly at him across the bar and laughing, laughing! Saying, ignore him my darlings, he has no feelings at all, before getting very vigorously smooched right there and then. By a beautiful woman, by a handsome and adventurous man, it didn't matter. As long as Geralt was there to see that Jaskier didn't  _ need _ him. Didn't  _ want _ him. Had the whole world to choose from.

But that wasn't going to happen. Geralt was going to walk out of this house and see Jaskier waiting there, cold and flushed, clearly having come to see him and only him. Just like old times, Jaskier had come running and was once again at the witcher's mercy. 

He could destroy me with a look, Jaskier thought with grim certainty. If he ignored me now. If he acted as if I were a stranger, why, I don't know if I could stand it. 

It was too late to run away. The door opened. Jaskier's heart stopped. 

The man exiting the house had black leather armour and two swords, one of which was covered in strangely hued blood, but his hair was brown, not white, and his face was the wrong shape, and there were different scars running down his face. 

Helpless, Jaskier could only watch as a rain of golden coins fell at the unknown witcher's feet, obviously thoroughly confusing the hell out of him. It wasn't Geralt. 

Of course it wasn't. There were other witchers out there, after all. Not many, and less every few years, but others nonetheless. 

"Cheers for the witcher!" the woman called, the loss of her plates momentarily forgotten in the heady joy of watching a victorious monster hunter emerge from her house. "Hip hip!" 

Jaskier turned on his heel and walked away before the witcher could swing his bemused gaze to him. The walk back was bitter cold, and his toes were numb. 

He felt like an utter fool. An utter, utter fool

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mission failed. we'll get em next time


	4. To Wallow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a warning for alcohol use in this chapter! i'll add a warning to the main fic tags too, because it probably should come with a warning given how drunk jaskier keeps getting. i'm sorry gang. it's just very fun to write.

Marx's room was depressingly twee. The man had decorative carved plates hanging on the wooden walls, all depicting idyllic pastoral scenes of milkmaids herding cows and lone shepherds leaning longingly against walls. Jaskier had heard Valdo refer to them as  _ bucolic _ , which in his opinion sounded like a sickness that made babies burp too much. 

Valdo was sitting at his desk, muttering something and writing away. The scratch of his quill against parchment was annoying Jaskier. 

Bucolic. Jaskier had been out in the country long enough to know all that nonsense about gentle noble farmers and fawning country girls was absolute nonsense. The countryside was sick with greenery. It was poor and toothless. It was wiry people, sunburned and made strong by labour, walking down a muddy road making bawdy jokes at each other and casting suspicious glances as they walked by. It was relentless mid day sun beating down on their brows until they took refuge under the only tree on the grassy knoll. It was the hot fire of an evening in the field, and it was long, lonely stretches of path winding between fallow fields with only the jangle of Roach's tackle and the hoot of an occasional owl to keep them company. 

Cities - well, cities could be worse or better. When he was in the city, his attention was distracted by all the people, all the sights and sounds. But out there in the countryside, it was just him and Geralt. 

And then there was the world beyond the farmer's fields. The wilderness. Geralt had taken him there, too, and that was something entirely different. Cool forests of evergreen trees, the road carpeted with needles, muffling Roach's steps. Blue mountains looming closer, threatening to meet them. Meadows of wildflowers scattered by chaos and chance, leaping and bobbing in the wind. 

How long ago was it now, that day in the meadow? Jaskier had twisted his ankle - or, pretended to, perhaps - either way, Geralt had let him sit on Roach behind him, only for a little way, as they sailed through a sea of bright flowers humming with insects. And Jaskier had been so entranced by the colour that he had wanted to pick some flowers to decorate his buttonholes. He had leaned off Roach, plucking flowers up by the stem, dangerously tilted off her back. One flower had been tougher than he expected, tugging at his grip, and he had yelped, and prepared to tumble off Roach and into the wild plants - 

But Geralt's hand had shot back and gripped the front of his shirt with that restrained strength he had, and Jaskier had been hauled back into his seat. 

And then, sneakily, Jaskier had threaded a little yellow flower into Geralt's hair. He had noticed, no doubt, but the combination of the mild sun, blue sky, and sweet flower smell must have softened him, because he didn't pull it out until later that night, when they camped under the trees...

"- I said, when are you going for that haircut? Hello? Are you listening?"

Jaskier blinked, looking away from a carved plate and at Valdo's corseted back. "Haircut?" 

"Yes. To neaten up that scruff of yours. You're an embarrassment to be seen with - you weren't listening at all, were you." 

Valdo's voice was icy. Jaskier blushed slightly. "No, not really. I was just... daydreaming." 

"Terrible habit that should be reserved for prepubescent boys and bored housewives," Valdo shot back, and when he turned to look at Jaskier, his expression was displeased. "Out with it. You've got that miserable look in your eye like a kicked dog. I'll give you one chance to be honest with me."

"I was just admiring your plate," Jaskier said, and Valdo snorted. 

"You hate my plates. No, you've got the face you make when you think about  _ that _ bastard."

"I wasn't thinking about Geralt!" 

"You're always thinking about Geralt of bloody Rivia."

Jaskier sniffed. "My life," he lied, "doesn't revolve around him."

"He lives in your mind, you know that? It's like he's in the fucking room with us. I never fucking asked for a threesome with bloody you, me, and bloody Geralt of god forsaken Rivia." 

"What do you want me to say, Valdo?" Jaskier said, voice raising slightly. "That I'm going to forget him? Move on? I'm trying!" 

"You aren't! You aren't trying at all!" Valdo jabbed back, incensed. "You're wallowing in self pity. You're sitting and stewing in it, feeling sorry for yourself and not doing anything about it, because you  _ like _ how it hurts." 

Jaskier made an indignant noise, but Valdo continued: 

"As titillating as it was to steal the White Wolf's little bedwarmer, I'm not particularly interested in playing sloppy second fiddle to your pathetic puppy crush on a man who's never shown the slightest inclination to fuck you! Either wake up and learn to  _ appreciate what you have, _ or leave!" 

Jaskier looked at Valdo. His face was bright red with anger, he could tell - puppy crush, gods, this was more than a puppy crush - White Wolf's bedwarmer? The insult didn't even make sense - and that stupid ruff Valdo wore, a pox on that ruff - 

He was trying to get a rise out of Jaskier, trying to taunt him back into that cycle they had once careened through too often, where they'd scream and yell and throw death curses at each other, a genuine bone deep hatred bringing them to blows, and after, feeling like utter shit, Jaskier would cry and sniffle and Valdo would hold him and say he forgave Jaskier for being such a piece of cold snot, and then they would fight again... and Jaskier was tired. He was older now. He'd travelled the continent, for fuck sake. He was no longer the lonely boy who came to Oxenfurt desperate for approval and attention. He'd gained his approval over the years until he'd finally gotten it from himself. 

He didn't need the twisted kind of intensity that Valdo provided. He just wanted to go and be sad in peace.

"Where are you going," Valdo snapped, looking, of all things, surprised that Jaskier was putting on his jacket and preparing to leave. 

"To wallow," Jaskier replied cynically, and left. 

* * *

There was a dark little tavern a half hour walk out from Oxenfurt. Jaskier liked it because students didn't travel this far out. It was a real working man's pub, not the fancy establishments that catered to the children of nobles away from home, the ones that populated Oxenfurt proper. This was the kind of place where a man could drink himself into oblivion, and then a kindly old farmer would put him on a cart and carry him out into a field to sleep off his alcohol coma in peace. Jaskier knew this from experience. It was part of the charm. 

He was three sheets to the wind and feeling it, warmed on potato liquor but cold inside. The tavern keep was used to this by now - this poncy prick in fancy dress who came and sat in a dark corner and glared at his cup like it had personally offended him. 

This was Jaskier's brooding pub. Nobody asked him to play songs here. He could watch the labourers from the field come in and order soup and ale, and drink, and nobody would throw him a single glance anymore. 

Blearily, he tilted his head back, feeling the whole world tilt with it. He was frustrated that Valdo hadn't been the distraction he had hoped for today, but it was about time the storm broke. Perhaps he had been very unfair to Valdo. Perhaps he had been carrying the ghost of Geralt around with him a little too zealously. So much for getting over the man - he was being haunted, that much was true. 

The door opened with a bang, disturbing his gentle haze. There was a commotion, and with dawning horror, Jaskier watched as several of his students tumbled inside. They were chattering among themselves, gawking at the rough furniture and the dirty straw on the floor - who was it, Torrera with her distinctive mess of brown curls, Gainsely, as swaddled in scarves as ever, Horace and his unfortunate lack of chin, Rimmond who was blonde and giggly and clinging onto the boy she'd been talking to before, what was his name, broadset shoulders and dark eyes - was it Jurgesson?

His common sense kicked in a second too late, and he turned his face away, trying to look inconspicuous - but he heard one of the girls say, "professor!" rather loudly, drawing attention to him. 

"Honorary," he mumbled, grimacing. They didn't hear him. He found himself swarmed by students taking chairs around him. 

"What are you doing out here?" Horace laughed, and Jaskier wanted to snap, what's it look like? Getting marvellously toasted and trying to forget my own last name. Don't ask stupid questions! 

Instead, desperately trying to keep his gaze steady and not look drunk, he gestured vaguely and muttered, "taking in the country air." 

"What a dive," Torrera was muttering. She had a very distinctive accent - the accent of a girl who had lived her life being palmed off on expensive governess to expensive governess, and got thoroughly educated to within an inch of her life because of it. "I've never come out here before." 

"I think it's rustic," Rimmond said. What does that even mean? Jaskier thought. What does rustic mean? Dirty? Muddy? Full of poor people? 

"Can we get you a drink, professor?" Jurgesson said, already standing to take orders, and Jaskier thought,  _ jebać to _ . 

"A sherry," he said, and Jurgesson laughed like he'd made a funny joke. 

"Alright, let's all get one. Six sherries. Your round next, Gainsely." 

Gainsely squeaked under their coats and cloaks. They seemed slightly tongue-tied at sitting so close to Jaskier's side. Jaskier didn't care - he was melting into his chair, trying not to fizzle out. 

"Do you come here often, professor?" Horace was asking as the others started chattering about things Jaskier couldn't parse. "Seems a bit off the beaten track." 

That had been kind of the point. "S'quiet," Jaskier said with a shrug. "Very cheap. None of your poncy... fancy little wines and nibbles." 

"Do you perform here?" Rimmond asked, big blue eyes round as marbles, and Jaskier quickly shook his head. 

"Keep your voice down," he hissed, "last thing I need is the barkeep finding out I'm a bard. He'll start making me pay my tab." Hmm. That didn't sound very professorly. Fuck, he was always slightly looser lipped when he was like this. "Thinks I'm a fairly eccentric homeless lunatic," he said to try and explain himself. 

From the expressions on his student's faces, his words had had the opposite effect. 

"Why?" Torrera demanded. "How is that better?" 

"You're all ruining my cover," he cursed. 

"You're too funny, sir," Rimmond said, laughing and wiping her eyes. "Here's the sherry!" 

It was rather nice sherry. For all Jaskier said about poncy wines, he did enjoy a good sweet sherry. The students clearly thought so too. They bought five more rounds between them. 

The sun had long set. Jaskier raised his finger in the air and tried to hammer home the point he had been making. 

"Never meet your heroes," he hiccuped. His audience were half enthralled and half distracted. Rimmond and whats-his-name were all but canoodling, Gainsely was watching Torrera watch Jaskier with a slack open mouth, and Horace's face was pinched with concentration, hanging on Jaskier's every word. "Never. I tol' you. Look, look at me. I'm just a weird old man in a bar, and I'm just a  _ bard _ . What do you think a knight's going to be like, then? Eh? Think it's all going to be sunshine and rainbows and kisses under the oak tree? Nay. No such thing. It'll be  _ hurry up and bring me my bag Jaskier _ and  _ get the fire ready Jaskier _ and  _ shut up Jaskier you're giving me a headache _ and will you get a word of thanks? No! Not a single one." 

Rimmond was looking tearful again. "Even knights?" 

"Especially knights! Bastards, every one. You've - listen, you've read too many novels. Knights aren't noble men doing their duty for king and country. They're - how do I put this. Bastards. Murderers who can't get work elsewhere. Under the coin of a noble who uses them for dirty work." 

Torrera shook her head vehemently, her curls shaking. "No. My dad has knights. They're not just thugs." 

Jaskier remembered: noble kids. No experience of the world. "Oh, I'm sure they're lovely to you, miss lady of the household, but you bet as soon as they're out of your earshot they're as nasty as any other man. The only knights who aren't bastards are the religious ones, and they're nutjobs who'll talk your ear off about holy flames and rising tides of evil and, listen, just not worth it." 

Torrera was sputtering excuses, while Rimmond was looking like her world had crashed down around her ears, even as Jurgesson was trying to playfully nibble at them. 

"No, m'dears, the only difference between a noble man with knights and a bandit with a gang is whether he pisses in a chamberpot or not." Jaskier laughed to himself. "They'll both try and buy you. Not worth it. Not unless you're desperate." 

"Have you been desperate?" Gainsely said quietly, the first words they'd said for ten minutes, and it stopped Jaskier short. 

"Yes," he said finally. "Once or twice." 

"I'm sorry," Rimmond was sobbing. Ah. She was a weepy drunk. That was poor Jurgesson's night over. He'd be patting her back and listening to her sniffle til she passed out. Not Jaskier's problem. "I'm sorry knights have been so awful to you." 

"Don't be silly, I've always kept well clear of them. Was too busy following around Ge- Geralt." He stuttered to a halt, and hoped they wouldn't notice. He thought he was safe. 

He was not safe. 

"Why did you stop travelling around with him?" Gainsely asked, and Jaskier was beginning to think they had been drinking water, not sherry, because there was something far too bright in their eyes. 

"He sent me away," Jaskier said hollowly. "That's all." 

"He just told you to go?"

"In so many words," Jaskier hedged. "Sometimes, the wisest thing you can know is when to leave. When something is done." 

"Professor," Rimmond asked, leaning forward to touch his arm with weepy eyes. "Did you love him?" 

Jaskier froze. This was something he'd never said out loud, never, not even to himself. How did she tell? Was he that obvious? Of  _ course _ he was that obvious, he'd just told them all about his messy parting from Geralt and they'd seen him living his worst life, it would take an idiot not to see it. 

Geralt hadn't been an idiot. He'd been many things, but he was perceptive. He'd just decided to ignore it. 

"That's-" he stuttered. "What a strange question. It really depends how you define love - of course I was affectionate, we were good friends-"

"Just friends?" Torrera asked. 

"Well, you know, travelling companions, brothers in arms, two guys on the road, that's really beyond the usual - the framework of conventional relationships-"

"Did he love you?" Gainsely asked in a conspiratorial sort of whisper, and the table fell silent. 

Jaskier looked away. Looked at his cup, looked at the table. Took a deep breath. 

"Listen," he said quietly, leaning in. The students leaned in too. "There's the gross and misinformed rumour that witchers can't feel. This isn't true. I saw Geralt run the whole gamut of emotions, you know. Witchers feel but - not like we do, I think. Not as openly. Or maybe  _ Geralt _ was never as open. I can't speak for other witchers." He shakes his hand. "Not the point. The point is... perhaps he did. Perhaps he didn't. I'm beginning to lean towards  _ didn't _ , but whatever it was that brewed under his skin, he kept there. Make no mistake, a stranger would mark his composure and take it for impassive coldness, but he wasn't cold. He's private. Stone faced. But he had tells. I knew when he was happy." He was rambling, he knew, but it felt so good to finally talk about it to someone, even if he would regret it in the morning. "I think he held me in some kind of regard. Bugger me if I know what kind of regard it was, though." He sighed. "Perhaps nothing more than appreciation for my usefulness at times. But, perhaps, deep and genuine friendship. I like to think it was that." 

"Oh, professor," Rimmond sighed, and threw herself at him in a messy hug. Jaskier gently tried to extricate himself before things could get out of hand. She was getting his shoulder damp. 

"Now, now, Rimmond, that's quite unnecessary- oh!"

The other students were giving him a hug as well, trapping him in a gangly mess of robes and sympathetic looks, and Jaskier could do nothing but accept it with a chagrined smile. Had he ever been so young and reckless? 

Of course he had. 

“Gerrof,” he said gruffly. “I’m your professor. It’s unseemly.”

“Well then,  _ professor, _ ” Torrera said sardonically as they all pulled back, completely shameless, “tell us a story about when you were with Geralt. You know, the real version, not what’s in the songs. _ Teach _ us something.”

The other students nodded eagerly. Ah, damn and blast, what’s the harm, he thought. 

“Well, let’s see. There was the one time where I ended up nearly losing my voice for good thanks to an ill-timed desire to have fish for supper, which all started when I saw Geralt wielding a rather large net...”

* * *

The band of six figures made quite a sight as they walked along the road to Oxenfurt from the tavern. Trailing behind was a blonde girl being propped up by a wideset man, and beside them, an unfortunately chinless boy who kept tripping over invisible potholes in the road: next came a figure in cloaks and capes, the only sensible one against the nip of frost in the air, and by them was a girl with lots of brown curls and deep skin, and, at the very front, leading them with a rallying cry, was a very messy looking fellow in a colourful slashed jacket and bright hose, hitting the ground with a branch he’d found in the ditch. They were all singing at the top of their voices, in different keys, styles and tempos, but the same lyrics. Vaguely. 

“... man has two eyes and hands and feet, 

But only one sword where his two legs meet!

And when it tires, the man gets bored-

But never the witcher, who has two swords!

A dog has one bark, a cow has one bell, 

The devil himself only has one hell, 

Even great dragons each have one hoard-

But not the lucky witcher, who has two swords!

One for his left and one for his right, 

One’s very big and the other’s very bright, 

When you think he’s done, he draws another one-

To last the fight til morning light, or whenever he’s won-”

It wasn’t a particularly complicated song, but then again, they never are when they’re being yelled at unfavourable times at night by drunken students. 

* * *

Jaskier stumbled into the hallway of his digs with a stupid grin, voice hoarse. He was snickering to himself, because his last parting shot to the students had been: “don’t think you can skip your lecture tomorrow morning or I’ll tell the Dean you left campus last night after curfew”, and the looks on their faces had been priceless. 

The landlady stumbled downstairs to shake her head at him, though she hadn’t been sleeping. She was well used to his routine now. It was long past the time when she’d scold him for coming home late and in a mess. 

“Master Jaskier, you had a gentleman caller while you were out,” she said, and Jaskier laughed again. Hah. Fucking Valdo, most likely, come to grovel. Or fuck. Who knew. 

“What did the basta- the fool want? Mind my language, miss.”

She gave him a frown. “Didn’t say, sir. Didn’t leave a message or name.”

Jaskier thought about it. “Was he big? Wide, you’d say?”

“Hmm. I suppose so, sir.”

“Unpleasant sort of expression?”

“He wasn’t quite friendly, no.”

“Stupid hair? Ugly, pox ridden ruff?”

“Oh, yes, sir, quite stupid, I suppose. No ruff, but perhaps he took it off.”

Valdo. Fucking Valdo. Jaskier heaved an overdramatic sigh. He had been struggling to undo his boots for the whole conversation, and all the exercise was wearing him out. 

“Oh, my Phylla, beautiful Phylla, please help me take off my shoes, for I know you adore me too much to see me suffer.”

“I’ve been trying to have you kicked out for years,” she responded, though there was a little glimmer in her eyes which told him she didn’t really mind undressing him as much as she pretended. “Off to bed, and no more drinking. You’ll regret it in the morning.”

“I regret most choices I make,” Jaskier responded with a grin, and, promptly, fell up the stairs in a tumble of hose and sherry pleasantness. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a mysterious gentleman caller, aye? i wonder who that is........................
> 
> also, we will be spending a little more time with these students in future chapters, so let me know if you guys need a little chart or something to keep track of names and faces. i know i get lost all the time, and i write them lmao


	5. The Proposition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry, this fic is literally just "Jaskier talks a lot" and I refuse to apologise for it 
> 
> Also thank you once more for the kind comments and kudoses!! They really cheer a writer up on a dreary day <3

It was a day later that a memory tumbled back into place in the messy pitfall of Jaskier's mind. His own voice rang out quite clearly, slurred but confident, while his student looked on in awe. 

"None of you," he had said, "would last a day out on the road. None of you. Do any of you know how to mend clothes? And I don't mean that fancy needlepoint shit they make rich young ladies do, I mean proper, hold in your boots, socks falling to pieces, that kind of mending. No? What about campfires? Pay rates? Route... plotting? No? Well, just you wait and see, I'll - oh, another glass, thank you, Horace..." 

As he examined the memory, sitting quietly at his desk and answering a few letters, he paused and smiled to himself as something struck him. No, what a terrible idea. He couldn't. The Dean would never allow this kind of thing. 

But... at the same time... 

Laughing to himself, he grabbed a new leaf of paper and started scribbling away with an energy that he hadn't felt in weeks. For a moment, his despondency and hurt melted away as he realised that there was something he could do for his students that would be far, far more invaluable than a bunch of stuffy lectures in a dusty hall. In their place, an electric thrill ran through him. 

He had a plan. He was going to make these students the greatest generation of bards and scholars the world had ever seen. 

* * *

"Right," Jaskier said, clapping his hands together to get the class' attention. Every set of eyes landed on him, curious and expectant. He gestured to himself with a languid wave. "I wanted to take a small diversion before we begin to ask what, exactly, you little academic dreamers hope to get out of your various courses and qualifications. Come on, hands up." 

One or two feeble hands raised, and Jaskier pounced on them with alacrity. 

"Yes, you, tell me."

"Um... to be a bard." 

Jaskier pursed his mouth. "An admirable goal, but as I've said before, a foolish one. Alright, someone else-"

"I also want to be a bard." 

"Good lord - alright, would everyone here pleased raise your hand if you don't want to become a wandering minstrel." 

Only one hand raised. It was Horace. Jaskier clung to him like a lifeline. 

"And what would you like to be? Hm? A philosopher? A rhetorician? A teacher?" 

"An accountant," Horace said, flushing slightly, and Jaskier blinked. 

"An accountant? A trade?"

"Yes, professor," Horace replied, averting his gaze. A few of the less tactful students passed looks at each other. Horace's family clearly wasn't of  _ completely _ noble stock if they were to allow their son to enter a _trade_. Jaskier was thrown too, but he recovered admirably. 

"An accountant," he said, faintly. "Well, someone needs to understand how numbers work. I've never been able to make sense of them myself, and that's gotten me into trouble before."

"But professor," Torrera said with her distinctive demanding voice, "you studied the seven liberal arts. Half of those are numbers." 

"And a fat lot of good it did me!" Jaskier burst out with a laugh that bordered on a manic giggle. "Yes, you heard me right. No matter your end goal - bard, accountant, trophy wife, philosopher, oh, I don't know, anything - your degree is, I'm afraid, absolute bunkum if you don't have the secret second ingredient."

There were several extremely worried looks on people's faces. The Oxenfurt Academy brochures had neglected to mention a secret, important second half to their liberal arts degrees. Jaskier could see several brains trying to calculate what another seven arts and sciences could feasibly be. 

"And that ingredient," he said, "is cold, hard experience. Real life experience. The wisdom of going out there and getting dark and dirty with the common rabble." 

Now the faces looked somewhere between amused, affronted, and curious. Jaskier could see several of them writing him off as one of those old men who say that the key to success is the wisdom of old age. 

"Do you mean like... an apprenticeship?" Rimmond asked, in a tone which sounded as if Jaskier had just suggested everybody strip down and parade in the courtyard for coin. 

"Not quite," Jaskier replied, "though those are good takings for anyone who wants them. A person with a trade is worth a lot of money out there. No. I'm talking about... listen, how many of you have actually spent more than a week travelling?" 

A fair few hands raised. 

"Alone?" 

The hands went down. 

"Don't mistake me for some old, fuddy duddy professor saying all young people are inexperienced and spoiled compared to how it was back in his day," Jaskier said as a warning. "I'm saying this as a man who spent  _ twenty years _ travelling around in the middle of nowhere with a person who wasn't fond of baths, houses, or the kind of civilisation that costs more than a night at an inn: I'm saying this not as your Professor Pankratz, but as the travelling bard Jaskier. It's  _ hard _ out there. Extremely hard."

He paused and looked over the group. It was difficult to judge their reaction to his words - all eyes were wide open. 

"A lot of you are noble's kids, am I right?'" He took a seat on his desk, hitching his feet up onto his chair. "Don't raise your hands, for god's sakes. That's the best way to get jumped and beaten out there beyond the Academy campus. Look - I'll be honest with you all. In some ways, you're deeply advantaged. You've been trained in etiquette. You've had to balance books on your head since you could start walking, and now you walk upright with so much posture you look like poplar trees. You know in which order to use all the fancy little spoons at a duchess's tea party. But all of that knowledge? All that training? The stuff they tell you is your gods given right to enjoy?" 

He waves vaguely at the window. 

"It means nothing out there. Less than nothing. Outside the little bubble of academics and nobles and aristocrats, nobody gives a rat's arse about how you eat your soup, unless it means they can get a bigger reward for robbing you. And when you graduate, they - the upper management of this Academy - they're going to send you all out into the world, just like that, all graduated with honours, with the expectancy that you'll all toddle back into the bubble you were borne from, nice and safe and boring, looking after mum and dad's estates, meeting up with the old college pals every year for a tipple at the country club." He shook his head despairingly. "Because if they sent you into the  _ real _ world, it would be a  _ slaughter _ ." 

And he couldn't stand that. Couldn't stand to watch all these bright young happy faces become marred by bitterness and disappointment, hurt beyond repair by the uncaring cruelty of the world, wondering why, just why, they should care about peasants and farmers when those same peasants and farmers would never welcome them with open arms. These kids were going to be  _ lords _ and  _ ladies _ . They were going to be  _ landowners _ . And Jaskier had seen the kinds of landowners who had toddled into the real word and gotten hurt and disillusioned with what they found - not the bucolic softness of Valdo's wooden plates, not the gentle milkmaid or the handsome farm boy, but shit and death and raucous, laughing joy at their expense. 

Those kinds of landowners made stupid decisions. They turned peasants into numbers. They were cruel not because they were malicious, but because their upbringing and their upbraiding was designed to make them cruel. 

Jaskier wasn't a revolutionary. It was fun when drunk to debate with certain politically minded colleagues about the merits and drawbacks of fiefdom and landlords, but he wasn't on the barricades laying down his life for the working man. 

But these students were  _ his _ students. They were young people who he  _ knew _ . He wanted them to follow the footsteps of kind people, not assholes. 

"If you all are serious about being a travelling bard - and I mean  _ serious _ . I mean, risk the anger of your family upon your head serious. I mean, put your reputation and breeding on the line serious. Then the best thing I can teach you all is how to forget yourselves and become better survivalists instead of better academics." 

There was a ripple of whispering through the class. Jaskier raised a hand. 

"Some of you may have changed your mind on the whole bard thing, and I want you all to know that I think that's incredibly wise of you. That's why, if you choose to keep studying as normal, we will continue on the curriculum set by the academy, which involves your weekly essays and your dissertations and theses and whatnot. But for those who are serious, I will be offering an alternative form of assessment - to be decided - which I think will more fairly prove your newfound prowess as a whole and hearty member of the travelling arts. What form this assessment will take is yet to be confirmed, but rest assured it will be fair and will count towards your end qualifications. Now. If you have any questions, please feel free to come and find me in my office, or catch me if you see me around. Until then, let's move on and forget about that - I want to see what you have researched since last class about the emotional effects of key changes, and how tricky they are to pull off..." 

* * *

"And that's what I said to Ysolda," Jaskier's companion said around a mouthful of stew. "Don't saddle me with the dog. I'm not going to chase after it whenever it steals her lamb shanks. Absolute nightmare." 

Jaskier hummed, tearing at a piece of bread and dipping it in his own stew. 

Two academics meeting in a bar for lunch wasn't an uncommon sight in Oxenfurt. Town of learning, home of wisdom, the oldest academy on the continent (by its own reckoning, of course). Here, noble minds sparked discussions on the meaning of history, and the fabric of reality, and the objective truth of science and all things. Here, in this bar, sat a man who had studied the seven liberal arts and proclaimed himself to be an expert in nearly all things, provided those things were in relation to grammar, rhetoric, logic, geometry, arithmetic, music, or astronomy. Even a bit of geography and geology at a push. He had created music that travelled the land, bedded hundreds of women and men, and walked side by side with a deadly witcher for two decades without so much as a scratch. Opposite him sat one of the greatest minds in history, a man who was working on a unified theory of mass, which was hard because every existing theory was so very very not unified and, in fact, often contradicted each other completely. Mass was his matter, and his matter was mass. He was a polyglot, speaking most modern languages and a few dead ones too. Together, they were the product of all of human ingenuity and learning, thousands of orens and florens of tuition, and millions of hours spent in dark, dusty rooms reading dry parchment in tiny fonts. 

"And it shits?" Jaskier said, leaning back in his chair. 

"Aye. Like a cow," replied his companion, Philippe von Lomberdeux, Professor in Speculative Objectivity and Thrice Elected Chair of the Grand Peers Symposium for New Revelations in Mass Theory. "All over my floors. Incontinent and half senile." 

Jaskier nodded thoughtfully. "And she won't, say... let it retire, if you will? Turn it out onto the street?"

"She refuses. Says the mutt's too dear to her."

"Obviously not dear enough to keep it in her house." 

"Well... she just got new carpets, and while it's got its current... illness..."

Jaskier shook his head. They were both entirely stumped by the matter of what to do with this man's girlfriend's dog. 

"Looks like you're stuck with it."

"Say... Julian, I don't suppose..."

"Oh, absolutely not. No, no way. With my landlady? I couldn't do that to her."

"More a pity. I'm tempted to leave my front door ajar while I take a walk and let nature take its course. If the poor mutt couldn't stay inside..."

Jaskier made a subtle gesture to the tavern keep, a plump lady with bright red cheeks and a very rosy nose, who made her way over between the tables. 

"Making trouble, boys?" 

Her accent was warm and thick, and Jaskier gave her a fond smile. 

"Not us! We are perfectly well behaved." 

"Oh aye, and I'm a virgin. Now, what's the matter with you." 

"Only that I want to cover my dear companion here for our lovely meal. A thousand kisses for your chef, if you would be so kind as to pass them on." He made a smooching motion, and she pushed his head back by the forehead with the palm of her hand. 

"You keep your thousand kisses, little brat. I know where they've been."

"Women like a well travelled man!" Jaskier was already counting out the money, the usual amount for lunch, onto the table. "One day, my dear Gerta, I will win thy heart." 

"No you won't," she shot back with a grin. "Oh, speaking of well travelled - we had your witcher come in. Think he wasn't expecting such a warm welcome."

Jaskier waved her away. "Oh, I saw him. Not my witcher. Some other bloke."

"You sure? I thought you were following around that White Wolf of yours. You know, the one you won't stop bloody singing about." 

Jaskier shook his head. "No, no, that's Geralt. He's quite distinctive. White hair. Looks like he's in a foul mood. The one who came here had brown hair and some distinctive scars."

Gerta was shaking her head. "I don't know who you saw, but the witcher who came here had white hair like you say. Called himself Geralt. Why, are you calling me an idiot?" 

Jaskier had gone pale. "What? Geralt was in here? When? Why?" 

"A couple days ago. Think he was just passing through. Asked our Thom about you."

"He asked about me?" 

"Just if we'd seen you around. Course, I know what you're like, big men chasing you around after you've made a cuckold of 'em, so I said I wasn't sure if I'd seen you recently. Which, judging by how you look like you're sweating like a pig right now, I judge was the right answer." 

Jaskier shook his head. "No. Yes, I mean. My gods. He was here? It definitely was him? Here in Oxenfurt?"

"Unless I'm going senile young," Gerta replied, looking more than a little amused at Jaskier's sudden flustered panic. "So, are you being hunted by a witcher or not? I don't quite fancy your chances against him. He was fiercer than I thought he'd be, what with your songs." 

"He wouldn't chase me," Jaskier said with a quiet moan, sinking into his chair. "Why would he? He's probably got a contract nearby. He wouldn't try and find me. Unless - no, he wouldn't be mad at me - Gerta, if you would, I need quite a stiff drink right now-"

Gerta was already walking away, snorting to herself as she immediately went to the top shelf behind her well tended bar. 

"Haven't you got class in a bit?" Philippe said with a raised eyebrow, and Jaskier just shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. 

"They've seen me worse, unfortunately. A couple of days ago. He's probably not still in town then, not if he was just passing through. Probably on a contract nearby. Bloody hell, I wonder - I had a caller two days ago - did he stop at my accomodation? What the hell would he want with me-"

"Slow down, slow down," Philippe said with growing concern, shaking Jaskier's arm. "What's going on? Is this witcher really after you? My gods, Julian, what did you  _ do _ to piss  _ him _ off?" 

"Everything," Jaskier replied, with an incredulous laugh. "No, I - I didn't do anything! Not that he'd chase me for. No, no, quite the opposite. We parted ways-" a delicate way of phrasing such a horrible, gnawing ache, a punch right in the softest parts of Jaskier's underbelly, a bite at an artery that won't stop bleeding out "-and I was under the impression that we were... done, you know. That I was to come back here and settle down."

Philippe nodded, still looking concerned. "Perhaps he was just popping in to say hello." 

"Maybe." Jaskier wasn't convinced. "Perhaps he was just curious about me as he passed through. Perhaps you're right." 

"Funny, I thought witchers were better at finding people who didn't want to be found than that. For monster killers, you think they wouldn't lose their quarry so easily." 

"You're right. They wouldn't." Jaskier slowly let out a breath he had been holding, hands unclenching from the end of the table. "If he really wanted to find me, he could. He could sniff me out if he wanted. Quite literally, I add. And he wouldn't have asked - I wouldn't have known he was following me until he was at my throat." 

Philippe looked rather pale. "And you travelled with him? Weren't you worried he would...?"

"Hurt me?" Jaskier shook his head. "No. No I wasn't. He kills monsters, not men."

"Then... why are you acting like he-"

"Here you are," Gerta said, reappearing with a shot of something golden and dangerous. Jaskier chugged it, eyes watering from the fumes. "No charge. You look like you need a bolstering." 

"You angel," Jaskier breathed, but his heart wasn't in it. "I feel my nerves settling already. Well, nevermind, eh. He won't be back."

"If he is, what should I tell him?" Gerta asked. "That you're out of town on business? That you died?" 

"No!" Jaskier yelped. "Yes. No. I don't see why he'd come back, but if he does... if he does, I suppose you should just tell him to try my accomodation. No, tell him to bugger off. But if he insists, tell him to come find me. And send a boy over to let me know, would you? Or..." 

"You're dallying like a spurned lover," Gerta laughed, clearing away their plates and cups. "I'll tell him you can't decide where you are, how about that?" 

"Ugh," Jaskier said eloquently, and put his head in his hands. "I'm overthinking."

Gerta was already gone. Philippe patted his shoulder in a gesture that was probably meant to be comforting. 

"Take it easy, Julian. I won't ask you if you don't want to explain, though I'm rightly curious about what happened between you both to get you into a state like this when he calls for you. I thought you were happy following him around. That's the impression we got, anyway. You did spend nearly all your summers with him, after all. Nobody thought you'd ever come back here and actually stick around for the whole semester, let alone get back into teaching."

Jaskier let his shoulders drop, and looked up through his fingers at Philippe, his mouth twisting up into wry frustration. "I was happy," he said confidently, and then, less certainly, "I was happy. I had the time of my life getting into all his messes. I never thought I'd end up back here either. But... I don't know. You hit your thirty sixth birthday, and your feet are sore, and you've travelled around half the world and all you're seeing is suffering and shit and people going hungry and begging for aid and scamming you and chasing you out with pitchforks and you think, what am I doing? Where am I going? And I thought I knew that. I thought that my destination didn't matter, as long as it was two paces behind-" 

He cut himself off, quickly. 

"-behind my destiny," he said, instead of what he was about to say. "Seeking inspiration for songs, you know. But then..."

But then his  _ destiny _ told him to fuck off, and he'd drifted, cast free, untethered into the endless big black ocean of reality, a world so big and also so small, and he'd walked down that mountain and looked around the dusty village at the bottom and thought, is this it? Is this it, for eternity? Alone? Just a man on aching feet wandering from hungry village to hungry village, fleeing shit, fleeing war, fleeing death? 

Alone? 

"I needed an anchor," he confessed. "And, well, knowledge is a heavy burden. Why not burden some young impressionable minds, hey." 

"Legend said you'd only taught here for a year before jumping out a window with your lute without telling a soul," Philippe said with a snort. "Back when you were young. Blimey, you've mellowed with age, haven't you, if you're sticking around for good."

"Faded with age," Jaskier corrected him, also snorting. "I'll be going grey soon." 

"I'm already there, you twat." 

"Well, not all of us can be blessed with beauty as he grow older." Jaskier took a deep breath, and settled into his chair, taking a moment to look out the window beside them and just breathe. "Alright. I should start getting ready for my class. I've got to meet with the Dean about something before I go."

"Right, off you pop then. And thanks for lunch."

"Don't mention it."

Jaskier left the bar more confused than he had been for weeks. 

* * *

The Dean looked down at the pieces of paper before him. It was very well laid out, he had to admit. Every item was accounted for. Every expense was chartered, tallied, and budgeted into oblivion. The itinerary was impeccable. There wasn't a minute that hadn't been thrice checked and organised. 

"Three days?" he asked, just to confirm, and Jaskier nodded. 

"Just three. One up, one to stay and explore, and one back down." 

The Dean leafed through the pages, eyebrows raising to his hairline. "Where are the horses?" 

"What horses?" Jaskier replied. He was sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the Dean's desk, twiddling his thumbs. "It's meant to be a hike, not a ride." 

"Then how will they carry their stuff?"

"On their back, sir. In a backpack."

"A backpack." The Dean was astounded. "Three days worth of items in a backpack. Each." 

"No offense, sir, but I've had to carry a lifetime's worth of stuff in a backpack before, because Geralt rarely let me up on - well, what I'm saying is, it's a core part of the experience." Jaskier sounded hopeful in a way the Dean hadn't heard for a while. There was a tinge of loveliness to it that hadn't surfaced since the bard had returned, grey-faced and half dead, from his decades long sojourn. "Sharing resources means we'll all be able to pack light. Especially if we hunt food rather than bring it." 

"Hunt," the Dean repeated. 

"Yes, sir."

"Hunt what, exactly."

"Well - not boar or deer, that seems rather dangerous and I don't think any of them have that kind of experience. Rabbit. Fish. Maybe a badger or two. I think they ought to learn how to trap properly. It's a reliable way to feed oneself-"

"Julian," the Dean said, raising a hand to cut Jaskier short before he could launch into an excited rant about trapping or fishing, "I want you to take a step back and look at what you're proposing. A three day hike into the woods with you and your students, doing goodness knows what - chopping trees and catching rabbits, apparently - and, furthermore, making it their final exam instead of a dissertation."

Jaskier nodded like he couldn't see the problem here. His expression was oddly blank, a very polite smile across his lips. "Yes, sir."

"No writing or performing."

"They might perform a little while we're out there, but that's not what I'd grade them on."

"And what, exactly, would you grade them on?"

"Survivability," Jaskier replied, stretching his hands out in a wide gesture. "Hardiness. Ingenuity. Toughness-"

"Things which are difficult to quantify in grades, and hard to define to start with," the Dean sighed. "They're doing academic degrees, professor, not training courses at the army."

"Maybe they should do a bit of training!" Jaskier burst out. "After all, if they want to be bards, they're going to get into fights all the time! It's a tough world out there and while I have always had the luxury of relying on my words, it never hurts to know one's way around a dagger-"

"A dagger?" 

"They're lightweight and portable and fast. Good bard weapon."

The Dean pinched the bridge of his nose. "And what, do you think, the parents will say when they learn that their precious little sons and daughters have run off into the woods to learn how to playfight instead of studiously doing what they paid for, which is becoming wise and learned scholars?"

"Fuck the parents!" Jaskier said, gesticulating wildly, completely full of steam. "It's not playfighting! I don't think you really understand me-"

"Understand what, Julian?" 

"Understand what it's like out there!" Jaskier leaned forward. "I had no idea what I was getting into when I went out into the real world. I didn't know how to tie a shoe properly, let alone start a fire, gut a fish and cook it. I was helpless. All the fancy words the academy taught me were useless. I had to rely on - on my companions for everything. It put me at a power disadvantage. I had to learn everything from scratch." From Geralt, who had patiently taught him how to tell when a fishing line was taught, and how to use a flintlock to make a fire that would last all night. How to care for a horse properly, because Julian Alfred Pankratz's horses had all been cared for by stablehands, a mysterious workforce that had given the adolescent boy a near endless supply of shiny, well kept ponies and mares. How to wash in a river. How to make a loop of wire and trap a hare. How to kill it quickly and skin it. "If I teach them this, it will save them so much time and hurt, and, maybe, save their lives too. You know it makes sense."

The Dean sat back, and was quiet for a moment, watching the fire smoulder in Jaskier's eyes. He tapped his fingers on his mahogany desk, making his cup of water tremble with anticipation.

"I want you to understand something," he began. "Your circumstances were... unusual, shall we say. The academy does not often offer scholarships, you know this. When you were disinherited, we recognised your talent and paid your tuition. We do not do this lightly."

"I know," Jaskier said, "but-"

"The students you have are not like you. Not like you were after that, anyway." The Dean looked tired for a moment. "As you're aware, the vast majority are of noble caste. They come here because, let's be frank for a moment between ourselves, because it's respectable. Not because of a thirst for knowledge, not because their families want them to become bards or scientists or philosophers, but because it's a safe and expensive way to get your unruly youth off into the world for a few years to polish off their rough edges before they come home for good. And do you know what these young scholars do when they go back home, degrees in hand?" 

Jaskier didn't answer, but he knew. 

"They do exactly the same thing as their parents. They tend their land. They look after their tenants. They sit on money, and accrue it, and they use their fancy education like a decoration to hang on their wall. Yes, of course some of them take their passion with them, which is why you'll find many telescopes and star charts in the attics of mansions. But you know, as well as I, that these students aren't here to become bards." 

Jaskier looked away, the fine lines on his face all the deeper as his expression settled. "Some of them..."

"One or two rebels. Like you," the Dean said, almost fondly. "They might try and be more than their allotted role in society. Might do something insane, like send letters full of curse words to their parents and then come crying to the Dean that they've been cut off."

Jaskier snorted. His position hadn't been as simple as that, but they both knew that. It didn't bear repeating. 

"But I'm worried you're disrupting their education to teach them things that they have no value for."

Jaskier clenched his hands in his lap. "You say that because - because you don't  _ know _ the value of it," he said, just as heated as before. "Nobody does until they're lost and alone in the cold world. And yes, I know, I know most of them won't end up needing what I teach them, but it's more than that. I want to give them something before they graduate that they'll never lose. Something that will always be with them, a precious jewel that shines from within, never extinguishable. The freedom of three days out in the middle of nowhere. No parents sending them letters. No advisors, no dressing up, no etiquette. Seeing what it's really like out there. It's an opportunity they won't get again." He sighed. "I'm tired of seeing rich kids grow up stupid in tiny bubbles, not knowing that the people they lord over are living an unimaginable difference. And there's no metric for grading experience, but... we both know how invaluable it is."

The Dean nodded. He was silent again, mouth pursed. 

"I want you to know that this idea does appeal to me," he said quietly. "And I understand your reasonings. But it's so unprecedented - and so risky - that there's a very, very small chance it will get approved as it is. You understand that, don't you?" 

Jaskier nodded. "I won't get my hopes up," he lied. 

"Good. I'll see what I can do. But Julian..."

Jaskier waited. His face was mask-like again. The Dean sighed. 

"Try not to inspire  _ too _ much independence and experience in them. We don't want another student riot on our hands." 

"Yes, sir," Jaskier replied, suppressing a smile, before he fled the room with the speed of a bolting  horse . 


	6. A Molly Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> taking a lot of inspiration from the books for Jaskier and Geralt's relationship, since the Netflix show made Geralt so..... hm. untalkative. 
> 
> content warning for this chapter: there is a discussion around the themes of escaping an abusive relationship, so be careful if that makes you uncomfortable. if you want, you can just skip as soon as Jaskier finishes reading the letter! 
> 
> anyway, thank you to everyone who's read this far and has waited so patiently for an update - I love you!! Every comment and kudos makes me cry like a baby. Like a dumb little baby with emotions

"Why do you follow me, bard?" 

The two were huddled under a yew tree while the rain pummeled the ground around them. The storm had taken them by surprise and, lacking any caves or houses in the nearby mile radius, they decided to dive into the foliage of the nearest thicket and wait the rain out. It was cold. Huddled up against the witcher's side, Jaskier looked up at Geralt in surprise. It wasn't unusual that Geralt was _talking_ \- they'd often shared very pleasant conversations together by now, over the comfort of a bottle or two, about things like philosophy and history. Jaskier suspected that Geralt rather admired his (admittedly spotted) knowledge of the continent's broad political scope and pedigree. 

What was surprising was the content of the question. He thought it was obvious by now. 

"You're my muse," he said, looking at Geralt as if he'd grown a second head. "You inspire me to reach new and dizzying heights. Both metaphorical and, well, physical - no more mountain ridges or cliffs please, Geralt, I'm beginning to develop a most acute sense of vertigo..."

Geralt didn't seem content with this answer for once, which was strange, because Jaskier had told him many times before the same thing and never encountered resistance. 

"You once called the Countess de Stael your muse, but you don't follow her around," he said, and Jaskier winced. 

"That was ill-advised. I refuse to believe I ever did such a thing."

There was no more noise from Geralt, but his expression was loud: a thin line of stress down the middle of his brows, the same he got when he was thinking over a particularly stressful puzzle. The rain pattered down, but in their little refuge, the air was dry. It was almost cosy. 

"You could have settled with her, or someone like her. You're not eighteen anymore-"

"Don't lecture me about settling down and heirs and marriage and all that disagreeable talk of shackles and fences. I follow you, Geralt of Rivia, and I haven't regretted it a single day of my life." 

"Why?"

Jaskier heard the question within the question, the things that weren't being said. The concern for him. The disbelief. The part of Geralt that pulled and pushed, violently and without conciousness, grasping and denying himself in equal terms.

"You're my-" he said, trying again to say muse, but Geralt turned away with frustration, and Jaskier couldn't have that. "You must know," he said quietly, under his breath. "Surely you know." 

Geralt looked at him then, his broad face placid and impassive, and Jaskier knew that he did know, and had known for some time. He knew but he didn't understand, that much was clear, and the moment danced on the edge of a blade of grass, ready to topple at any moment. Geralt was asking questions that Jaskier was ready to answer, but the trouble was-

"Ask me that when you're ready to hear the answer," he said, low and sad, and Geralt seemed... surprised. "Ask me when you're ready, and I'll tell you it every day after that, even if you don't ask anymore." 

The rain continued. Their eyes held, the gaze between them heavy with everything unsaid. It was as possible to look away as it was to divert a storm. They were leaning inwards, inevitably, and Jaskier had had this moment many times with many people but it always felt so raw and new that it was like the first time all over again. 

That was, until Geralt closed his eyes suddenly, and sniffed. Jaskier paused, heart in his throat. 

"Petrichor," Geralt said, his eyes opening slowly like the blinking, sleepy affection of a pet cat, and Jaskier had to bite down the laugh in his throat. 

"Indeed," Jaskier said, ducking his head down to rest on Geralt's shoulder. "A pleasant smell." 

"Will you nap?" 

"I will, thank you for the invitation. Wake me when the rain eases up." 

Geralt hummed, and Jaskier closed his eyes. He would tell Geralt everything that cracked open the miserable little kernels of his heart, every truth that threatened to split his cheeks from holding them in his mouth too long. He would tell him when it was time. When Geralt was ready. 

* * *

"Professor," a voice said, and Jaskier jumped back from the open window. It had started raining, and he had wandered over, mind half in a dream, to stick his nose in the gap in the glass and take a deep breath, chasing the chemical smell of petrichor. But it was winter, and the ground had been damp and cold for too long. It smelled of coldness and sharpness, and that was it.

"Hello," Jaskier said, pulling his head back in from the cold and peering at his visitor. "Who is it?"

"Just me," the secretary said, "and a letter for you. On your desk, sir?" 

"I'll take it." Jaskier reached out for it, and looked it over. "Thank you, that's very..."

He trailed off mid-sentence. The wax seal on the envelope was horribly familiar to him. His heart sank into his stomach, suddenly heavy as lead, as he dragged a finger over the familiar crest: the laurels, the grapes, the swords... 

"Professor?"

"Ah, nothing. Thank you."

The secretary left, and Jaskier sat heavily behind his desk, tempted to toss the letter into the fire. It would contain nothing good, he was sure of it. He never received letters from Lettenhove anymore, unless something terrible had happened. Perhaps the Count had popped his clogs. It was about time. The both of them were elderly and unwell. 

With hands that barely trembled at all, he opened the letter and held it at arm's length to read, as if proximity to the ink would poison him. He read quickly. 

A frown appeared on his brow. He read it again, carefully this time, taking in every word. Finally, he did one last read, his eyebrows furrowed into deep lines. 

"...  _ visitor to the estate, _ " he murmured, reading aloud, " _ concerned with your current whereabouts... wouldn't write to you but for the nature of the visitor... white hair... dangerous _ ..." 

He put the letter down on the desk, and went back to the window, staring out of it with unseeing eyes. His mouth worked silently as he absorbed exactly what had been inside the letter. 

Unbelievable. 

He came back to it, and read the last paragraph again. 

"...  _ advise you to flee for it is certainly the precursor to a ransom attempt which we shall not pay out for _ . Hmm. Rude. But I appreciate the honesty." 

He sat down in his chair and put his head in his hands, trying to work it out. The letter was dated to three weeks ago. Geralt had gone to Lettenhove, of all places, not very long after... after the fight. The mountain. The Incident. From the sounds of it, he had waltzed into the main town and started asking suspicious questions about a certain missing Viscount, which... was Jaskier. Did Geralt know it was Jaskier? He had only let it slip the once, and he had thought Geralt wasn't paying attention when he did so. Did Geralt do his research? Who the hell had he intimidated that information out of? 

Jaskier was getting ahead of himself. The letter was only based on hearsay. It could have been any white haired dangerous stranger asking about the Lettenhove family. And even if it was Geralt, then perhaps he was simply asking around out of curiosity, or-

"Chance! Pure chance!" Jaskier said, waving the letter around. "Because why would he - that could be  _ any _ Viscount-"

He suddenly laughed, and it caught him by surprise. They thought Geralt was asking about him because he was a bandit or a crook looking for an easy target. It wasn't unusual at all for news to come to him of thugs who were seeking out the lost Viscount like a cash cow, but he was good at evading detection. 

Usually. 

Why the hell did Geralt go to Lettenhove? Why did he think Jaskier had gone home? That place held nothing for him now. Did Geralt think he would limp back to his parent's estate begging for their forgiveness? 

"Professor Pankratz?"

Jaskier jumped and turned to see who was calling for him now, hurriedly straightening his expression from whatever it had been before. At the door was the secretary again, looking concerned. 

"Yes, Molly?" 

"You were swearing under your breath, sir... quite loudly, sir." 

Jaskier winced. "Terribly sorry. I tend to chunter on, don't I. Dear oh dear."

She paused at the door, something clearly eating at her from the inside. Molly was a young secretary, a new hire who had appeared during one of Jaskier's absent summers with Geralt, and she had never quite gotten rid of her peculiar habit of avoiding eye contact as if it burned her. Jaskier didn't mind it, but it did make it harder to work out when she was trying to broach a perfectly innocent subject and when she was trying to tell him something sensitive. 

"... is something the matter?"

"Well, sir, I wouldn't usually poke my nose in, but there's a rumour going around that there's a witcher after you. He's not going to come here, is he? Into the school?" 

"No, I don't think so," Jaskier said, and then changed his mind. "Actually, he might, if he's determined enough." 

"Oh dear," Molly said, immediately looking ten times more nervous. "Oh, but isn't that dangerous?" 

"When a witcher is in the room, there's no safer place in the world," Jaskier said, turning his attention back to the window, distracted by the sound of a gaggle of children running down the street outside. 

"I know you hold them in high regard, sir... but there are rumours. My ma always said to watch out for men with gold eyes. Said they steal children for to eat. Said they'd soon as kill a man as they would a monster. Said they breed with monsters to make more monsters, and set them loose on villages to make coin from the poor peasants." 

"Molly, have you ever been the victim of a preposterous and hurtful rumour before?" Jaskier asked abruptly, and Molly shook her head. 

"Not to think on't."

"Would you like to?" 

And Jaskier whirled to look at her, luminous with a strange ferocity barely contained by his neat doublet and his jaunty little hat. Molly gulped and shook her head more vigorously. 

"No. I'm not trying to be nasty-"

"Then why are you saying these things to me?" 

She twisted her hands again. "Because I'm worried, sir. I'm ever so worried. I don't know what's true - you sing about the White Wolf like a hero, but we all saw what you was first like when you came back. You've got more scars than an old tomcat, and you were skinny as a twig, and half dead with misery. And I know you don't know me much at all, but I've seen things like this with the girls I know." 

Jaskier froze, his eyebrows raised with incredulity. "The other girls?" 

"My friends and my family," Molly said, face red with shame and effort, but carrying on bravely. "I'm here for you, sir, I am. I've seen it when a person gets mistreated. I've got people you can talk to." 

Jaskier sat down heavily in his chair, running his hands down his forehead. "Molly, I think you've misunderstood the situation."

"Maybe I have," Molly said, walking closer just enough to close the door behind her. "And I'm sorry for overstepping. If you say he didn't hurt you, then I'll stop worrying and leave you be."

She waited. Jaskier opened his mouth, and then shut it. What was he doing? Molly was just the secretary - not that her job was somehow less important than his, given that she had the unenviable job of organising both professors and students, and neither of those demographics were famed for their ability to organise themselves - but they'd never been more than distant acquaintances. Less than that. And here she was, awkwardly extending a branch to him as he helplessly floundered in the currents of the river, dragged along by forces that felt beyond him. Was this a woman thing or a Molly thing? Did he look like an abused wife in need of an ear? 

"He never took pleasure in hurting anyone," Jaskier said finally, as a precursor. "What I said was true. By his side, I was safe. And he was kind in his own way. Quiet." 

Molly nodded, coming closer still to listen. Her hands folded across her front. 

"And as the years went on, he got better and better at being my friend. He looked out for me. It was wonderful to meet up with him again after the snows thawed, and I think he quite looked forward to seeing me each time." Jaskier blinked. "At least, that was what I presumed." 

Shovelling shit. Always, endlessly shovelling shit. 

"Then he snapped at me. He has this on again, off again  _ thing _ , and it always leaves him hurt and angry. And this time he took it out on me." Jaskier sighed, and Molly put a gentle hand on his shoulder. 

"Did he hit you?" 

"No! No, never. Well, once, at the beginning, but never again, and that was because I accidentally called him a murderer and a bastard, which he quite took offense to. For a man who claims to have no feelings, he has rather a lot of them about certain epithets he's picked up over the years."

Shovelling shit. Molly said, "but did he hurt you?"

"He dumped me," Jaskier said, scowling and throwing his hands into the air. "He dumped me! Just like that! After so many years. Said he was tired of my company, in so many words. Made it quite clear that what I had mistaken for genuine companionship was, in fact, limited patience of which he had completely run out." He sighed. "That, or he said things he didn't mean because of feelings he claims he doesn't have. But what he said was cruel and honest. Too honest." 

One blessing. Jaskier doesn't remember all the words. Only bits and pieces. The key phrases. The emotion behind it. The indignation - how could Geralt be so cruel to him! What about their friendship! And the resignation - yes, he was right. Jaskier had often brought nothing but trouble to the man. So, so much trouble. 

With sudden clarity, he remembered who he was talking to and why, and he pressed his mouth closed into a thin line. 

"My apologies, my dear Molly, I didn't mean to ramble." 

"People have listened to me before. I'm just returning the favour." 

"Well, I still appreciate it. The truth sits heavy in one's chest like a weight. The act of unburdening it onto someone else brings great relief, doesn't it."

"That it does." She made to walk away, but paused, still looking troubled. "If he does find you again... will you go with him?"

Jaskier thought about it. If he were a strong man, the answer would be no. With a horrible moment of anagnorisis, he realised that he wasn't entirely sure that the answer would be no, after all. 

"It's alright, you don't have to answer to me," Molly hastily said, seeing something in his expression. "If he does show up here, I can... I can turn him away, sir."

Jaskier looked at her. She was a small woman, but her expression was hard and unyielding, despite the fact that the idea alone was clearly scaring her. The idea of this single secretary boldly standing up to the mountainous witcher who she was half convinced was a beast in human form made something in his heart twinge. 

"For me?"

"For you. For anyone who doesn't trust themselves with the decision."

"I... I appreciate that. I do. It's well beyond your duties." 

"Some things are more'n duty, sir. Some things you just do." 

Some things you just do. Jaskier blinked and turned his face to the cold draught from the window. Huh. She was right. Some things you just  _ do _ . 

"Thank you."

"Not to mention it."

She slipped out the door with one last look, but he was too busy staring at the sky, feeling that flame rise up in him again. He had a terrible, brilliant idea. 

He needed distance from Geralt. He needed to go somewhere the witcher wouldn't run into him. He also wanted to take his students camping whether the Dean liked it or not. 

It was time to start preparing. 


	7. An Arcane and Slippery Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hello everyone!! first of all, i love how much you all loved molly. we do indeed stan molly. queen of our hearts. anyway get prepared for yet more original characters because apparently i can't stop writing miserable women into my fics
> 
> second off, how are we liking the chapters? too much whump? not enough? do we want a geralt pov or would that ruin the tension? are we getting bored?
> 
> third off, i treasure every comment and kudos <3

It was amazing what Jaskier had hidden in his personal effects in Oxenfurt. When he laid everything out in his room, he was astounded that he had somehow managed to acquire two tents, one of which was helplessly torn, and what felt like ten pounds of various ropes. There was lantern oil, and sword oil, and oil for various flowers and plants that he had saved up for - for reasons, and boots and cloaks, and all manner of junk and detritus that he had apparently held onto all these years. 

The tents were an easy enough fix. He sent the ripped one off to a seamstress to patch up, and ordered three more at great expense, made from thick canvas. They would arrive soon. Next, he started writing letters to the local cobblers, enquiring about a bulk order of walking boots suitable for young persons on their first proper hike. He also asked around the faculty for donations of old blankets, since from experience, you could never have too many blankets while camping, especially when you'd never camped before. 

He sent off for a quote on canvas suitable to fashion bedrolls from, knowing that the waterproofing addition of wax would add to the expense - but really, a soggy bedroll was intolerable, and he was _well_ below budget. 

Well, he was _below_ budget. 

He was _skimming_ budget. 

It didn't matter. He was making things happen. His room was full of gear, his heart was full of glee, and his head was full of bright ideas and cotton fluff. These were the main three components for a good old fashioned adventure, he knew, and it was high time he got out there and caused some trouble. 

When he tromped down the stairs, arms full of old ropes that had frayed beyond use, his landlady finally stopped him with a touch to his arm. 

"What's all the noise, Master Jaskier? It sounds like you've been throwing girders about up there!"

"Oh, Phylla, my darling Phylla," Jaskier replied, clasping her hands in his in a fit of giddy pique, "the only thing being thrown is my gentle soul into chaos! And my room, alas, is also being thrown into chaos, but that is merely a side effect of the current turn of events: I am quite reinvigorated, I tell thee!" 

Phylla blinked and peered at him. "Have you been on the poppy?" 

"No!" Jaskier replied, "no, what? No, this is merely the natural giddiness of a man who has rekindled an old passion back into flame!" 

With a small frown, Phylla looked up the stairs, and then back at Jaskier. "You know I don't allow overnight visitors here, sir, nor do I let you bring back any of the working girls, lovely and polite as they are, because you know my rules about courting in the house-" 

"I'm not courting - Phylla, it's not a new lover, for goodness' sakes." Jaskier was very desperately trying to keep the reins on the energy of the conversation, but Phylla was making it difficult. "It's wandering! Roaming! Planning camps and routes and provisions!"

"Off on holiday?" Phylla asked mildly, and Jaskier deflated. 

"It's not a holiday. It's a learning experience. I'm taking my students out camping for a few days."

"Oh, lovely," Phylla replied, beaming. "Oh, I went camping once as a girl with my young man at the time. Well, sort of. We slept on a hay bale outside of his parent's house under some blankets. It wasn't quite camping I suppose, but it was the only way to get some privacy from his mother! Nosy bitch. God rest her, I suppose, shouldn't speak ill of the dead, 'specially not when she went so sudden like." 

Jaskier decided that the conversation was out of his hands, and he was at its mercy. With that in mind, he decided to let himself embrace the chaos. 

"And how did she die?" 

"Oh it were ever so strange, sir, she were halfway through her soup when suddenly she sat bolt upright and looked her husband dead in the eyes and said, I'm sick of this. And then she died."

"Just like that?" 

"Just like that. Ever so strange! I've never heard of anything like it." 

They stood together in silence for a second, pondering the meaning of it all. 

"If you don't mind," he said, finally extricating himself from the conversation, "I've got some errands to run, so..." 

"Of course! Mind you're back at five, though, because I shan't be dancing around keeping your dinner hot while I wait for you to stop gallivanting off in town." 

"I'll be back at five on the dot, my dear, my lovely Phylla."

"Turrah, sir, turrah." 

* * *

There was another, final thing which occurred to Jaskier, and for this task he decided a letter was not adequate. Instead, he waited until he had a day which was relatively free of tasks, and set off early on the road, telling Phylla not to expect him back before nightfall. 

The walk was refreshing but difficult. Being in Oxenfurt had stiffened him up. It had only been a little while, really, a few months, but Jaskier felt the muscles in his legs start to complain much sooner than they would have a year or two ago. He'd been softening up. What a scary thought - that his clock was winding down, soothed by feather beds and regular meals. The callouses on his feet had softened up too, and he had to take more than a few breaks to try and ease his blisters. 

Here he was again. Walking. One foot in front of the other, ad infinitum. The wintery landscape around him was dull and grey, but even that had beauty - the brittle watery light of the winter sun not quite burning away the mist that hovered over muddy fields, stalks of dead plants, barren trees. The greenest places were the churches with their evergreen yews, and the boundaries where the hollies were planted for the farmers to heed. Jaskier took a deep breath of cold air, appreciating how it made his lungs burn. Spring seemed so very very far away. 

He wasn't used to walking over cold-hardened ground. When he followed Geralt around, it would be in the summer. That was the best time to walk. The warm sun on his shoulders, the grass catching playfully at his ankles, the thick ring of birdcall from the hedges and the trees. The delicious smell of hot dirt and humidity signalling a storm ahead, as well as the smell of horse from Roach every now and then. Her snorts and breaths. The buzzing insects. Occasionally a grunt or a sigh from Geralt, and perhaps even a conversation if something caught his attention-

Jaskier stumbled on a stone and remembered where he was. The gentle memory of summer fell away, and with it, the imaginary warmth it brought to his skin. It shattered like ice. The dream of Roach, of Geralt, of blue skies and green fields, cracked and splintered as Jaskier concentrated on the reality: a long, cold walk through the barren countryside. Alone. 

Thankfully, he came to the gate of the estate sooner than he expected. The man at the gate gave him a hot mug of milk to warm his hands before sending him on up to the main house. 

It wasn't long before Jaskier was sitting in a lavish study, warming feet by a roaring fire, while the patriarch of the house doddered in on frail legs. 

"Little Julian!" was the first thing he said, and Jaskier jumped up to shake his hand. 

"So you remember me then, do you?"

"Of course I do," said the elderly Earl of Denesle, peering at Jaskier through cataracts. "How could I forget such a troublemaker? What a wedding that was!" 

Jaskier grinned despite himself, remembering it well. "How are your lovely daughter and her new husband? Any new babies?" 

"Two since you saw them," the Earl replied, sitting himself down in his seat with a groan. "Bonny things. Take after their grandpa." 

"Ah, I'm glad." 

The Earl nodded, and then tilted his head. "Where's that fellow you brought with you? That Witcher fellow?" 

Jaskier's smile turned into a grimace. He had been invited to the Earl's daughter's wedding to sing, and he had managed to convince Geralt to come as a bodyguard. He almost went ballistic when they turned Geralt away at the door - whose bloody idea of a joke was it to spread the rumour that a witcher brought bad luck to a wedding? Jaskier had spent the evening thoroughly putting paid to that idea. In fact, he was rather sure he'd started a trend of young couples inviting witchers to their weddings for luck - not that many witchers took up the offer.

"Ah, we parted ways recently." He paused. "At Cairngorn. Don't know what he's doing now." 

The Earl's expression flickered. "Ah, I know Cairngorn! One of our knights went there, isn't that right? Off to fight a dragon, by the gods. That's real grit and spirit there. Did he get it?"

Jaskier remembered seeing Sir Eyck die rather ignobly without getting a single scratch on the dragon. "Couldn't say, your lordship." 

"Wonder if he'll go back to Denesle or pop by and see us here. You know, I quite enjoy having this little estate by the Pontar." 

"Actually, that's what I wanted to ask you!" Jaskier said, whirling to fix the Earl a hopeful look. "I don't know if you remember, but I'm tenured at Oxenfurt Academy!" 

"Ah, yes, I remember," the Earl said, "caused quite a stir when you got accepted... haven't you graduated yet?" 

"I'm a professor now," Jaskier replied, patiently. The Earl nodded vaguely. 

"Wonderful, yes. Wonderful stuff." He clearly didn't quite understand what the fuss was about, but was too polite to say so to Jaskier's face. "Not returning home just yet?" 

_ It's been two decades _ , Jaskier wanted to say, but he restrained himself. "Your noble lordship, I actually came to beg a favour from you. I know you own great swathes of the land between Oxenfurt and Novigrad, and even beyond here, to the west. Tell me... beyond hunting and agriculture, have you ever considered its use in academic settings?" 

* * *

It took a good hour to fully explain the plan to the old Earl, but when he got the gist of the idea, he was almost as enthusiastic as Jaskier was. It was a pleasant surprise to have someone finally support him so wholeheartedly. The Earl promised him full permission to find a good place to make camp, provided it didn't disturb the game and was out of way of the foresters, and he would even provide Jaskier with a gamekeeper to guide him through the more wild parts of their journey. Jaskier suspected the gamekeeper would also act as a stock keeper to mark how much of the Earl's game was captured and eaten by his hungry students, but that suited him fine.

Poring over old maps and books, the two plotted a perfect route that would have a little bit of everything - some forest scavenging, some climbing, and even some fishing for supper. 

"The only question is when, my dear boy?" the Earl said, his eyes glittering despite the milky blindness. "You can't possibly be thinking of taking them this month. It's still bitterly cold. Better to wait for summer."

"I can't wait for summer," Jaskier said, "they'll all graduate in summer and bugger off to do other things. And besides, it's not that cold. It hasn't even snowed. I don't see the problem."

"Now now, Julian, no need to rush. Wait until the spring comes proper, at least, so they don't freeze in their tents." 

"But that's - that's so long away! I'm sure they'll be able to handle it." 

"Honestly, my dear boy, what's the rush?"

And Jaskier couldn't explain it. He'd never been able to explain the force that pushed him into doing the things he did, as if controlled from above on strings pulling him towards his fate. He had pushed himself to Oxenfurt, and into a witcher's companionship, and into countless incidences of trouble over the years, not to mention all the beds he pushed himself into - with willing consent, of course. 

“I suppose I can wait,” he finally said, thinking of the grimaces on his poor students’ faces if he did force them to trudge all the way out here in the cold. “When the first daffodils flower, then.”

“Alright,” the Earl laughed, evidently amused by Jaskier’s rather lyrical choice of timeframe. “If I see those flowers, I’ll know to expect you along soon, gaggle of ducklings in tow.”

* * *

When Jaskier explained he was walking back, the Earl scoffed and ordered him to stay for food and wine, and go back in the morning by hitching a lift on the market cart. Jaskier spent a rather agreeable evening drinking the gorgeous mead they brewed on the estate itself and feasting on boar - an impressive feat for the time of year and the local migratory patterns of boar - while entertaining the Earl and his daughter with tall tales on his lute. 

“And twas the giant killer who stood, two foot yea, as the great bear-man of Galligay fell at his feet, and he did say - my, what a view from up here, ay!”

The Earl roared with laughter, choking slightly around his meat. At his side was his daughter, a woman of around fifty perhaps, who Jaskier learned owned the estate due to her advantageous marriage to a local Oxenfurt lord. He recognised her vaguely from his childhood days, though time had altered them both so much he wasn’t surprised when she didn’t recognise him - beyond his name. 

“Master Dandelion,” she said, indulgently, after the laughter had subsided. “Such whimsical tales - some seem so familiar to me, and yet still shock me with certain details, or perhaps, the twisting of some words - well, it surprises me. From whence do you pluck your inspirations?”

“Ah, inspiration is an arcane and slippery thing, nebulous and Delphic, and I question it not when I put quill to paper and, behold, a new masterpiece appears! It is as if some great bolt of lightning hits my head, and spreads down my arms and my chest and out through my hand down into the ink, as if I am merely some great conduit for the  _ Muses _ to  _ uses _ as they  _ pleases _ .”

“Bold, to say everything you write is a masterpiece.”

“I have to be bold. I’m a bard.”

“So you claim a bard is but a divine artifice for the gods themselves to use! That likens him to a legendary weapon, or some sort of amulet. Or, good gods, an oracle!”

Jaskier grinned. He rather liked getting into nonsensical philosophical arguments with people who were cleverer than him. “Will you strike me for my hubris?”

“Oh, strike him, strike him,” the Earl chortled goodnaturedly, pointing to the fire. “Get the poker out and beat some sense into him.”

“Many have tried before,” Jaskier said with a fake sniffle, turning his nose up and holding his hand to his chest. “You may as well divert a river from its course...”

“Ah, I’ve heard this aphorism before. You’re more magpie than Muse,” the daughter said, and Jaskier shook his head. 

“Well of course you’ve heard it. I invented it!”

“Oracle indeed.” She grinned at him, and the grin held terrible promise. “And what else can you claim to have invented? The ballad, I suppose? Romance and heartbreak?”

“You are correct, though I know you tease,” Jaskier replied, unable to resist the opportunity to brag. “In fact, many scholars credit me with inventing the modern hero-ballad, name to be decided. The idol-saga. The... the... the protagonist-polka! Unofficially, I suppose you could call me a barker of sorts.”

The daughter tilted her head. “Ah, now you’re more of a mutt than a magpie. Tell me, lapdog, who do you bark for?”

He swallowed his next sentence and chewed it in his mouth, taking just a moment to correct himself. “At present, this dog has no master,” he said quickly, carefully neutral. The daughter hummed with curiosity, but Jaskier just shrugged haplessly, mouth gluing itself shut for once. 

They both looked across at the Earl, who was snoring gently. His age meant he had succumbed to sleep rather quickly, full of mead and meat. The daughter sighed, and then nodded. 

“I’ll show you to your room, then,” she said, rising from her seat gracefully, and Jaskier followed suit. 

* * *

It didn’t take long to reach Jaskier’s room. He entered and prepared to bid her goodnight, but the daughter hovered on the doorway, a thoughtful look on her face, and Jaskier waited for her to speak. She didn’t, but she didn’t leave. 

A candle was already flickering, the room prepared by servants earlier, and in the low light her face was exceptionally handsome - lined with age and stress, but honest and handsome. Her hair was pulled back, but it suited her, gave her a regal air. 

“This house is terribly quiet,” Jaskier said, to break the silence. “Is it just you and your father?”

“For tonight,” she said, and Jaskier wondered if he was reading too much into her words. “My husband is currently missing.”

“Oh,” Jaskier said, and decided he was. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. I know where he is.” Her mouth twisted with distaste. “He’s finally taken a mistress in the village, I assume.”

Ah, alright, maybe he wasn’t misreading. He nodded knowingly. “Ah.”

She came into the room, and closed the door behind her. When she sat on his bed, she patted the mattress for him to sit beside her. Jaskier sat, hesitantly. It felt a bit like he was about to be lectured by one of his old governesses. There was another moment of silence. 

“My companion,” Jaskier said finally, “is also missing.  _ Missing _ , I mean. I know where... where my companion is.” In Oxenfurt and Lettenhove, apparently. “It’s strange to live in parallel with someone who has become a stranger to you now, isn’t it.”

“I didn’t realise you were married,” the daughter said, and Jaskier winced and wiggled his hand. 

“It’s complicated.”

There was another silent moment. She looked at him, and he looked at her. The air was heavy and bitter to swallow. 

“Listen,” Jaskier said again, “if you’re just doing this for revenge, or some sort of-”

He was about to say, you don’t need to, when she kissed him full on the mouth, and extinguished the candle. 

“Wait,” Jaskier said between breaths, and felt her pulling away. 

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s... it’s fine. If you want to, we can continue, I just - I suppose that I think I recognise what this is, and it isn’t...”

“You wanted a romance, bard?”

Jaskier swallowed. No. No, he hadn’t, but he realised now that he knew the taste of her despair. It was the same he had drowned in those first few days back at Oxenfurt. Oh, gods, this was what he had subjected Marx to, wasn’t it? He had come to Valdo with bitter eyes and bitter tongue and  _ taken _ , just like this. It hadn’t been about sex or romance. It had always been about Geralt. This was the same. Her husband was missing, but his presence was as loud as if he were standing over them, staring them both in the eye. 

“Maybe just a little romance,” he said quietly, and felt her snort. 

“Maybe not.” He felt very very young when he felt her get off the bed. “Mention nothing to anyone.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

She left, and he lay in the dark for some time, feeling utterly split in half. One side of the bed was taken up by a very young, very small Julian who wondered what he had done wrong, and on the other half was all the weight of his years, Professor Pankratz, who ached with tiredness and blisters. 

“I must be old if I turn down the chance to cuckold a prick,” he muttered, and fell asleep a long time afterwards. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh shit i forgot to say, are there any cool geraskier/witcher discord servers out there? i'm wasting away by my lonesome out here man


	8. Harriet's Baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this one is a bit of an interlude while jaskier travels back home and geralt....... exists
> 
> the students are up to no good! they keep getting away from me. also gwent is hard
> 
> also thank you everyone for waiting patiently for this update!! i've been through exam hell but now i should be able to release more consistently. love you all so much - thanks for sticking with me!

Amille Rimmond was not what most people would call a smart girl. This was because she had a tendency to giggle, and there was a rather moony, mournful look in her pale grey eyes that sent boys into fits of desire, convinced that they were both smarter and unhappier than her and therefore she was their soulmate. Her parents doubted that she would get much out of her degree, but it was the done thing, and since she was the third in line there was not much pressure to keep her on the estate when she could be out there rubbing her braincells together to see if any sparks flew. 

She was no musical genius. She didn't have a mathematician's brain, nor did she excel in her logic and her rhetoric classes. She was dreamy. She walked into things and couldn't hold a conversation if she was already doing something else. 

So, no, she had never been called smart. She herself did not call herself smart. In fact, she wasn't even sure why the academy hadn't flunked her off the course yet. 

But she was by no means a fool. Foolish, yes, young and deeply in love, and prone to being overcome with such deep emotion that she didn't understand why everyone else wasn't also bursting into tears all the time. But no fool. 

If there was one core thing about herself that she loved, it was her capability to love and be loved. She was resilient. She bobbed on the waters of despair like a little wooden duck, stubbornly staying above water, refusing to be bogged down by weed and rot. She had never ever met a person that she couldn't befriend in some capacity. 

"Hullo? Amille? Wakey wakey!" 

Torrera rather uncharitably snapped her fingers in front of Rimmond's face, and she blinked. She had been listening to the conversation. It just wasn't interesting. 

"Gods, you're so laid back that you're practically lying down. I said, where's your vampire?"

"Don't call him that," Rimmond said mildly, shuffling her gwent cards in her hand.

"Why not? He's always necking you." Torrera squinted and threw down a fairly powerful catapult with a grin. "Ha, double power because of the assist. That means it's... hmm, three plus six, no, twelve..."

Rimmond had already calculated the new total and deferred her turn. 

"What? No play? Coward, ay? Alright, I win this round, you realise? Are you sure?" 

"Yeah, it's fine." 

"Hmph." 

The used cards were discarded, and Torrera went first. While she deliberated which card to place, Rimmond looked round the courtyard. 

The weather was mild, much milder than yesterday, with no wind to speak of, though it was still bitter in the shade. Where Torrera and Rimmond huddled was a nice sunny spot in summer, conveniently located where the heat of the kitchen below rose and warmed the stone, producing a pocket of warmth in the brisk courtyard. In the middle was a square of grass which was usually filled with students lounging in the sun or doing some outdoor reading. She and Jurgesson had passed many a nice evening out there doing plenty of... reading together. 

"Moonface, stop daydreaming! It's your go!" 

"Ah, sorry." 

She placed an archer, and Torrera snorted. 

The courtyard was abandoned for now, though professors rushed across it to get to meetings and classes, and students walked in thick huddles, swaddled in cloaks despite the pale efforts of the sun. 

One of the puddles of cloaks split from a group and waddled over. The worried face that poked out from between scarves showed it was Gainsely: Rimmond had never worked out if they were a girl or a boy, and at this point it felt far too rude to ask. 

"Amille, Viki, there you are." They sounded even more nervous than usual. "Are you playing gwent in the cold? Viki, you hate playing against Amille."

"Hah! I'm winning!" Torrera placed down a card triumphantly, and Rimmond meekly placed down another archer. "What's wrong? You're shaking like a shitting dog." 

"It's Jurgesson and Horace," they said, squatting beside the girls. "They've hatched this stupid plan together. I need you to stop them." 

"A plan?" 

"They want to lure a witcher to Oxenfurt so they can ask him questions for their final project." 

Both Rimmond and Torrera stared at them in shock, mouths agape. 

"How?" Torrera squawked. 

"Well, don't tell anyone, but they heard from a friend who's got a cousin working in the house of someone who runs the markets in the nearby villages, there have been a couple of disappearances. It's just regular ones, you know, someone's senile old granny wandering off into the woods or whatever, but Horace and Jurgesson want to plant some evidence and make it look like a monster." 

"He'll be able to tell right away!" Torrera gasped. "You heard the professor talk about the White Wolf. Witchers can smell the difference between humans based on three day old farts!"

"They don't need to fool a witcher, they only need to fool the villagers so they'll put up a bounty," Rimmond said, thoughtful and distant, placing down a mid level swordsman. Torrera regarded it with a sniff. It was far too weak to consider as anything but a desperation tactic.

Rimmond put down a weather card. Torrera stiffened. She didn't have many cards left, and suddenly her entire row of trebuchets was useless. Hah, actually, she wouldn't need to worry - weather was such a volatile tactic and she had plenty of counters. 

"Leader card! I clear all weather effects," she said, and smiled smugly, shaking her brown curls out in triumph. The game was hers again. 

"Guys please," Gainsely begged. "I can't be the only person who thinks this is an abominable idea! The witcher will be angry if he gets summoned and there's no actual monster here to slay! What if he gets mad at the boys?" They bit their nails, voice turning plaintive. "What if he gets mad at the  _ professor _ ?" 

"He wouldn't, the professor is his friend," Torrera said authoritatively.

"His lover," Rimmond corrected her. Torrera whipped to glare at her. She hated being corrected. 

"Not that again, they’re just good friends!" Torrera rolled her eyes and gestured to the Gwent game. "Now hurry up and lose already."

Gainsley watched as Rimmond opened her mouth to say something, and then closed it. She was silent for a moment shuffling through her cards, though she looked like she was concentrating on anything but the game. 

"It's all in his songs," she said finally, a little cryptically. Torrera raised an eyebrow. 

In a flash of movement, Rimmond placed down a card, and suddenly threw the rest of her hand aside carelessly. "I win."

Torrera gaped and looked up and down from the board to the cards. "Wh- what! No, I still have cards left, and-"

"No matter which card I play next, my score will be at least one point ahead of yours, since you used up your leader card ability and you tend to burn your double score cards early. All you have left are weather cards and a few low level infantry, right? And even if you still kept your specials, all I'd have to do is play frost again and it would ruin your current play even into the next round." Rimmond leant back and looked up at the sky, holding out a hand to feel if it had started to rain with a frown. "We could keep playing, but I know you don't like to get your cards wet, and you're not going to win." 

As Torrera gasped and sputtered, quickly doing some mental calculations, Gainsely stared at Rimmond, who was sighing again. Funny, but she never seemed smart at all. Even when she played Gwent, you thought you were winning until you realised that somehow she had been reading your strategy the entire time and had countered you perfectly right to the end. 

Nobody liked playing Gwent against Rimmond, because she always won. And the worst part was, she didn't even do it competitively. 

"I hate when you do that!" Torrera was saying, gathering all her cards up, "hate it when you - augh! I hate Gwent, it's a stupid game for stupid people." 

Right, thought Gainsely, staring shrewdly at Rimmond. For stupid people. But that was okay because, as most people knew, Rimmond was not a smart girl. 

* * *

Horace looked nervously across as Jurgesson washed his hands in a horse trough. The deed was done. The body of the pig had been strewn out from branch to branch in a quiet clearing deep in the woods, entrails waving in the breeze, and now all that was left was to wait for the villagers to find it and... well, freak out. 

Jurgesson was the taller and manlier one between them. People assumed Horace was a bit of a weakling, given his unfortunate lack of chin and his sandy hair, but he had been the one to take apart the pig in a way which looked like a beast had done it. 

Jurgesson had whistled slowly when he saw the mess, looking at Horace with new eyes. 

“Got a violent streak, eh? It’s always the quiet ones.”

Horace had kept silent. It was better than admitting that he had learned how to butcher a pig to save every single inch of its flesh for the coming winter months because it would be all the meat they had for a while. 

Now, cleaned up and satisfied with their work, they took a seat round the back of the inn and waited for the next coach back to Oxenfurt. There would be one any minute. 

The sound of a raised woman’s voice from indoors alarmed them both. They stared at each other. It was hard to tell what she was saying, but she was certainly going at it with a vengeance. 

“Come on,” Jurgesson said with a grin, gesturing to a nearby window. “Let’s go see what the fuss is about.”

They pressed their faces to the murky glass and looked inside. There was the woman, yelling and pointing, facing towards their vantage point. In front of her, with his back to them, was a broad man. He had two swords strapped across his back, and even in the dark, you could tell his hair was brilliant white. 

Horace gasped, hitting Jurgesson’s shoulder. 

“That’s-” he whispered, but Jurgesson clapped a hand over his mouth, pointing to his ears. Right. If it was who he thought it was...

“... come pokin’ around ‘ere for!” the woman was still yelling. By now her husband was trying to tug her away by the elbow, but she was stubbornly ignoring him. “With our Harriet havin’ her third on the way! ‘Ow dare you bring your narsty little presence in here and - and pollute our air so - I tell you, Rick, he should sleep in the barn!”

“I am not putting the White Wolf in the barn,” Rick was saying, clearly fighting a losing battle. “That’s just superstition, my love, and I’ll never ‘ear the end of it if the lads found out I put the Oxenfurt witcher in the barn.”

“I’ll sleep in the barn,” a low voice rumbled. Hairs stood up on the back of Horace’s neck when he realised that it was Geralt’s voice.  _ The _ Geralt.  _ Professor Jaskier’s _ Geralt. It was him, in the flesh, just a short distance away. 

“You will not,” the innkeeper was saying, batting away his wife’s protests. “I’m getting an ‘ot bath ordered for you right away, and into the ‘oneymoon suite you will go. If his presence really so bothers Harriet’s baby, she can go and stay with her nan for the night. Is that good enough for you, my dear?”

The wife looked at her husband, then at Geralt, and then down to where he had presumably held out his coin purse for display. 

“Alright,” she grumbled, “but only because I remember the last time you came through here with that lovely lad and his guitar, or whatever it is.  _ He _ can stop by any time he likes.” 

“I bet he can,” groused the husband, who wandered away to deal with the other patrons. Horace and Jurgesson swapped knowing looks - but then the rumbling voice of the witcher sounded again, and they pressed their ears to the glass. 

“Have you seen him lately? The... the lovely lad.”

The wife stopped short, looking thoughtful. “Not as much these days. Comes and has a drink ‘ere at times, or I see him passing through for the festivals. Mostly holes up in the town proper now.”

There was a grumble of frustration. Horace felt his heart rate kick up. The witcher was looking for the professor, he was sure of it - so why couldn’t he find him? Why didn’t he just go to Jaskier’s accommodation? Was Jaskier in trouble? Or... was this the professor trying to avoid a romantic entanglement...?

The witcher’s head twitched. One of the professor’s lyrics from class floated ominously across Horace’s brain, sing song and bright:

_... and he’ll be there in a heartbeat, for a heartbeat he can hear... as long as you’ve a heartbeat, there is naught you have to fear... _

He grabbed Jurgesson and pulled him down just as the witcher’s head turned. He caught a flash of a pale cheek, a sliver of bright gold, and then he was covering his mouth with his hand and staring at a very confused Jurgesson as they cowered beneath the windowsill. 

“What?” Jurgesson mouthed at him Horace just shook his head. Thankfully, before anything else could happen, the coach pulled up and let them on. Horace pulled them both onto a seat furthest from the window, and they cowered there together in a way that definitely wouldn’t get told to the girls (and Gainsely) later. 

When enough time had passed that neither of them were biting their lips in fear anymore, Jurgesson spoke up first. 

“He’s here way too early!” he said, frustrated. “We only just put out the bait! If he finds it, he’ll be able to tell that it was done by humans right away!”

“He’s looking for the professor,” Horace said, eyes wide. 

“What for?”

“Think about it!” Horace shook Jurgesson’s shoulder. “The professor said he was -  _ in love with the White Wolf _ ,” his voice dropped down to a whisper to avoid scandalising the other passengers, who were all eagerly eavesdropping anyway. “And then he came back to Oxenfurt all broken hearted and rejected, and I mean, who else is going to break his heart but the man he’s dedicated several lifetimes’ worth of work to? And now said subject is sniffing around the area looking for a man with an instrument...”

Jurgesson looked confused. “To apologise?”

“No,” Horace said, shaking his shoulder even more violently with excitement, “ _ to find a new bard. _ That could be us, Jurgesson. We could be Geralt’s personal wingmen! Think of the glory, the adventure, the excitement. And if there’s two of us, it’ll be even more fun!”

Jurgesson looked unconvinced. Horace steepled his fingers and tried not to look as eager as he felt. 

“The plan’s still on, Jurgesson. We keep leaving our little messes and see if we can’t tighten the net around him.”

As the coach drove on, Horace looked out the window, a giddy smile on his face. He would, by hook or by crook, make his family name one to remember. He would never again be ashamed of being a Horace. 


End file.
